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Title-page  of  the  First  Edition  of  King  James' 
Bible  (the  "Authorized  Version"),  i6ii. 

Frontispiece, 


THE  STORY  OF 
THE   BIBLE 


BY 


EUGENE    STOCK 


NEW    YORK 
GEORGE    H.    DORAN   COMPANY 


PREFACE 

This  little  book  has  been  written  at  the 
request  of  Dr.  C.  J.  Ridgeway,  Dean  of 
Carlisle,  as  one  of  a  series  for  the  use  of 
young  people  of  Confirmation  age.  It  does 
not  pretend  to  compete  with  several  popular 
books  in  which  the  history  of  the  English 
Bible  is  given  more  in  detail.  But  it  does 
attempt  to  do  what  I  think  no  other  has 
done,  viz.  to  tell,  in  a  brief  form,  and  in 
simple  and  colloquial  language,  the  Story 
of  the  Bible  from  the  early  ages  in  which 
parts  of  the  Old  Testament  were  written 
to  the  latest  Missionary  Versions  in  heathen 
lands.  And  the  last  two  chapters  are  de- 
signed to  confirm  the  faith  of  the  young 
reader  in  the  Scriptures  as  in  a  very  real 
sense  the  Word  of  God,  and  to  guide  him 
in  his  personal  study  of  it. 

I  wish  to  say  frankly  that  I  write  as  one 
who  is  not  afraid  of  Biblical  criticism.    There 


vi  PREFACE 

is  no  question  that  some  popular  ideas  about 
the  Bible,  or  parts  of  it,  have  undergone 
modification  owing  to  the  results  of  the 
scientific  study  of  its  contents  by  scholars, 
many  of  them  devout  Christians  ;  and  it 
would  not  at  all  surprise  me  if  some  of  the 
ideas  we  still  hold  should  have  to  be  corrected 
by  further  research.  The  astronomers  of 
the  1 6th  century  and  the  geologists  of  the 
19th  have  much  enlarged  our  concep- 
tions of  God's  creation  ;  and  more  recently, 
the  discoveries  in  Egypt  and  Assyria  have 
affected  our  systems  of  chronology.  It  may 
well  be  that  other  branches  of  study  will 
show  us  more  of  our  mistakes.  But  it  is  not 
the  Bible  that  will  suffer  in  the  long  run. 
Its  influence  in  the  world  is  greater  to-day 
than  at  any  former  period.  Never  was  it  so 
widely  and  reverently  studied.  Never  was 
its  divine  power  as  God's  instrument  for  the 
conversion  and  edification  of  men  so  manifest. 
Our  puny  theories  may  wither  like  the  grass, 
but  the  Word  of  God  shall  stand  for  ever. 

I  wish  to  thank  the  British  and  Foreign 
Bible  Society  for  the  illustrations,  the  speci- 
mens of  type,  &c.,  and  the  Religious  Tract 
Society  for  facsimiles  of  two  Versions  ;    also 


PREFACE  vii 

Mr.  H.  F.  Moule,  of  the  Bible  Society,  for 
his  kindness  in  reading  the  proofs. 

I  only  hope  the  book  may  give  half  as 
much  pleasure  to  the  young  readers  as  the 
preparation  of  it  has  given  to  myself;  and  I 
humbly  pray  that,  by  the  blessing  of  God, 
it  may  help  them  to  love  and  value  those 
"  Sacred  Writings  *'  w^hich  are  able  to  make 
them  wise  unto  salvation  through  faith  which 
is  in  Christ  Jesus. 

E.  S. 

Glencairn,  Bickley,  Kent, 
August  1906. 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 


I.  About  the   Book,  and  the   Books  i 

II.  About  the  Old  Testament  •       14 

III,  About  the  Old   Testament  :  the 

Canon  and  the  Languages       .        26 

IV.  About  the  New  Testament  Books  : 

the  Writers  and  the  Canon    .       40 

V.  About  the  New  Testament:  the 

Manuscripts  and  Versions         .       58 

VI.  About  Early  English  Versions    .       73 

VII.  About  the   Middle   Ages  and  the 

Revival  of  Learning         .         .       85 

VIII.  About  the  Bibles  of  the  English 

Reformation     .         .         .         «       99 

ix 


t  CONTENTS 

CHAP,  PAGE 

IX.  About    the    Authorized    and   the 

Revised  Versions        *  .  .116 

X.  About  the  Missionary  Versions    .      133 

XI.  About  the  Influence  of  the  Bible      161 

XII.  About  Reading  the  Bible    .  .184 

Index  of  Proper  Names         .  .     207 


BIBLIA 

«f  3Dcud)<  ant>  i.»tfn 


f5.p<Hil.a.Ce(ia.lIl. 

fyittcftt  p4fl«ge,a«&  be  glonpw.sct. 
e.pauJCel.m. 

ttwfifinaii  wff  fecmt  «t 

3«(ut  r. 
jlrt  net  t^t  bste  of  t^fo  lame  Kepattt 
otttoft^7moutl?,but  ejretcTl*  t^yfelfi 
tt){rirtb<r^  anb  nigt)tetct.- 


Title-page  of  Coverdale's  Bible,  1535,  the 
FIRST  Bible  printed  in  England. 

To  face  p.  i. 


The  Story  of  the  Bible 

CHAPTER   I 

ABOUT  THE  BOOK,  AND  THE  BOOKS 

I  AM  going  to  tell  you  the  Story  of  the  Bible. 
Is  the  Bible,  then,  a  story-book  ?  Well,  it 
does  tell  us  hundreds  of  stories— true  stories 
too  !  But  I  am  not  going  to  speak  of  these. 
You  can  read  them  all  for  yourselves.  My 
story  is  the  story  of  the  Bible  itself:  how 
it  was  written;  how  it  was  kept,  and 
copied,  and  translated,  and  circulated.  And 
a  wonderful  story  it  is  ! 

First  of  all,  what  does  the  word  Bible 
mean?  The  answer  to  this  question  is 
very  curious.  In  ancient  times  books  were 
written  either  on  dried  skins  or  on  a  part 
of  the  stem  of  a  reed  called  papyrus— th^ 
"bulrush"  of  which  the  box  or  "ark"  was 


A 


2       THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

made  in  which  the  infant  Moses  was  put. 
The  outer  coat  or  rind  of  this  reed  was 
called  biblos^  and  from  this  the  writing  on  it 
came  to  be  called  biblos.  So  in  the  Greek 
language  biblos  meant  a  book,  and  bib  lion  a 
little  book.  If  you  open  your  New  Testa- 
ment, you  will  find  that  its  first  words  are 
"  The  book  .  .  .  ,"  and  in  the  Greek,  in 
which  the  New  Testament  was  written,  the 
first  word  is  Biblos.  Then  if  you  turn  to 
the  4th  chapter  of  St.  Luke's  Gospel,  you 
will  find  that  when  Jesus  Christ  stood  up 
in  the  synagogue  at  Nazareth  to  read,  they 
gave  Him  a  book  to  read  out  of,  and  there 
the  Greek  word  is  biblion.  Now  the  plural 
of  biblion  is  biblia,  "  books "  ;  and  in  the 
Early  Church  the  Christians  used  to  call 
the  ancient  Scriptures  of  the  Old  Testament 
"  the  Books,"  biblia. 

By  and  by  the  Roman  Christians,  who 
spoke  the  Latin  language,  used  this  word 
biblia;  but  in  Latin  it  would  not  sound  like 
a  plural  word,  but  like  a  singular  one,  and  so 
with  them  biblia  came  to  mean  "  book,"  and 
they  used  it  of  the  whole  Scriptures  together 
as  one  book — Biblia — "the  Bible." 

So  in  Greek  the   Bible   means  "Books," 


ABOUT  THE  BOOK  3 

and  in  Latin  it  means  "The  Book."  And 
this  is  a  very  remarkable  thing,  because  it 
reminds  us  of  the  exact  truth.  Our  Bible 
is  "  books,"  and  it  is  also  "  The  Book."  We 
have  it  in  one  Volume,  but  the  Volume 
contains  sixty-six  separate  books.  Sixty-six 
books  !  That  is  quite  a  library,  is  it  not  ? 
The  word  "library,"  too, comes  from  another 
Latin  word,  liber^  a  book.  And  indeed  our 
Bible  really  is  a  wonderful  library  of  books. 
A  famous  learned  man  in  the  Early  Church, 
Saint  Jerome,  who  lived  350  years  after 
Christ,  called  it  the  Divine  Library.  And 
yet  it  is  in  another  sense  all  one,  the  One 
Book  of  God. 

When  I  was  a  little  boy,  I  used  to  have 
to  learn  a  verse  out  of  the  Bible  every  day ; 
and  one  of  the  first  pieces  that  I  learned  in 
that  way  was  the  Nineteenth  Psalm.  If  you 
will  look  at  that  Psalm,  you  will  find  that 
God  has  spoken  to  men  in  two  ways.  First 
we  read  that  "  the  heavens  declare  the  glory 
of  God "  ;  that  "  day  unto  day  uttereth 
speech,"  that  "  their  words  "  are  gone  '*  to 
the  end  of  the  world."  This  means  that  the 
beautiful  sky  and  sun  and  stars,  though  they 
have    no  voice    for   our   ears,   speak    to   our 


4       THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

minds  of  the  glory  and  greatness  of  God. 
But  then  the  Psalm  goes  on  to  tell  of  some- 
thing else  that  God  has  given  us,  His  "  law," 
"  testimony,"  "  precepts,"  "  commandment "  ; 
and  these  we  find  in  the  Bible.  So  we  have 
the  Book  of  Nature  and  the  Book  of  Grace. 
We  may  well  call  the  Bible  the  Book  of 
Grace,  because  it  tells  us,  not  only,  like  the 
Book  of  Nature,  of  God's  greatness  and 
power,  but  also  of  His  love  and  mercy  and 
grace  to  us  all. 

Let  us  now  think  a  little  what  sort  of 
Book  the  Bible  is. 

If  you  went  to  Turkey,  or  to  Egypt,  or 
to  some  parts  of  India,  you  would  find  that 
the  Mohammedans  there  have  a  book  which 
they  think  sacred,  called  the  Koran.  They 
would  tell  you  that  it  is  God's  book,  that  it 
is  His  message  to  men,  and  that  He  sent  it 
straight  down  from  heaven  by  an  angel,  just 
as  it  is.  Of  course  that  is  quite  untrue. 
But  do  you  think  that  God  sent  the  Bible 
straight  down  from  heaven  like  that,  just  as 
it  is  ?  Not  at  all.  God's  way  of  sending 
His  messages  to  men  was  quite  different. 

First,  when  men  in  the  early  ages  of  the 
world  had  forsaken  God,  and  were  worship- 


ABOUT  THE  BOOK  5 

ping  false  gods,  and  living  in  all  kinds  of  sin, 
God  chose  out  a  man  to  be  His  own  special 
servant,  and  told  him  that  his  descendants 
should  be  a  great  nation,  and  that  through 
them  all  other  nations  should  get  great 
blessings.  That  man  v^as  Abraham,  and 
his  descendants  were  the  people  of  Israel, 
whom  we  now  call  Jews.  Hundreds  of 
years  passed  away,  and  various  books  were 
written  by  these  Jews.  Some  wrote  his- 
tories of  their  nation  ;  some  wrote  songs 
and  hymns  ;  some,  who  were  called  pro- 
phets, wrote  down  messages  that  God  gave 
them  for  the  people  ;  some  wrote  accounts 
of  Jesus  Christ,  the  Son  of  God,  when  He 
had  come  into  the  world,  and  had  been 
crucified,  and  had  risen  again  and  gone  to 
heaven ;  some  wrote  letters  to  the  Chris- 
tians in  different  countries  and  cities  who 
had  learned  to  believe  in  Christ.  Those 
books,  or  at  least  some  of  them,  God  meant 
by  and  by  to  be  collected  together  to  make 
one  Book  which  should  be  His  great  Mes- 
sage or  Revelation  to  men.  Most  of  the 
men  who  wrote  the  books  did  not  know 
that  they  were  writing  parts  of  God's  great. 
Book.     They   wrote    histories,  or   songs,  or 


6       THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

letters,  for  the  people  of  their  own  times. 
But  God  was  all  the  while  guiding  them 
in  their  writing,  so  that  what  they  wrote 
should  be  suitable  for  His  Messages.  His 
Holy  Spirit  kept  them  from  writing  what 
was  not  true  or  not  good,  and  taught  them 
to  tell  men  rightly  about  God,  about  His 
power.  His  holiness.  His  love  ;  about  His 
hatred  of  sin,  and  His  way  of  saving  men 
from  sin  ;  about  life,  and  death,  and  eter- 
nity. I  think  that  some  of  them  felt  and 
knew  that  the  Holy  Spirit  was  thus  guid- 
ing them  ;  but  I  am  sure  they  had  no  idea 
that  what  they  were  writing  was  to  be 
read  and  loved  thousands  of  years  afterwards 
in  all  parts  of  the  world. 

We  call  this  guidance  of  the  Holy  Spirit 
Inspiration.  St.  Paul  wrote  to  Timothy 
about  the  Scripture  that  was  "  inspired  of 
God"  (2  Tim.  iii.  16);  and  in  the  Second 
Epistle  of  Peter  (i.  21)  we  read  that  the 
prophets  of  old  time  were  "  moved  by  the 
Holy  Ghost."  "  Inspiration "  means  in- 
breathing. We  read  in  the  20th  chapter 
of  St.  John  how  the  Lord  Jesus,  after  His 
resurrection,  breathed  on  His  disciples,  and 
said,  "  Receive   ye  the    Holy  Ghost."     His 


ABOUT  THE  BOOK  7 

breath  was  an  outward  and  visible  sign  of 
the  Holy  Spirit  coming  into  their  hearts 
and  minds ;  and  when  we  speak  of  a  pro- 
phet or  an  apostle  being  "  inspired,"  we 
mean  that  the  Holy  Spirit  was  guiding 
his  thoughts  and  feelings  and  words  and 
writings. 

Perhaps  you  will  ask  why  God  did  not 
give  us  His  messages  in  the  form  of  a  Creed, 
or  a  Catechism,  or  a  Sermon,  or  at  all  events 
in  one  book,  written  under  His  direction  by 
one  person,  with  all  His  teachings  in  order, 
and  complete.  Would  not  that  have  been 
better  for  us  ?  Why  should  He  take  a  pretty 
story  about  a  foreign  girl  who  gleaned  in 
a  Jewish  field  (Ruth),  and  a  sad  song  about 
the  captive  Jews  in  Babylon  (Ps.  cxxxvii.), 
and  a  letter  about  a  runaway  slave  (Ep.  to 
Philemon),  and  long  lists  of  names  (i  Chron.), 
and  make  them  parts  of  His  Book  ?  Well, 
but  remember  that  God  knows  best  I  I 
am  quite  sure  of  this,  that  the  Bible  is  much 
more  interesting  as  it  is.  It  has  been  read, 
and  thought  about,  and  talked  about,  and 
loved,  far  more  than  if  it  had  come  in  some 
other  form.  And  therefore  it  has  done  the 
work  He  meant  it  to  do.     In  the  Book  of 


8       THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

Isaiah  He  says  (Iv.  8),  "My  thoughts  are 
not  your  thoughts,  neither  are  your  ways 
My  ways";  and  which  do  you  think  are 
best,  His  or  ours  ?  Let  us  thank  God  for 
giving  us  His  Word  in  His  own  way  ;  and 
let  us  be  sure  that  every  part  of  it  has  some 
message  for  us.  We  shall  see  this  more 
clearly  by  and  by. 

We  now  see  how  good  it  is  that  the 
very  name  Bible  should  come  from  a  word 
which  means  "  Books "  and  a  word  which 
means  "  The  Book."  For  we  see  that  it  is 
both.  It  is  a  collection  of  Books,  a  Library. 
Genesis  is  a  Book.  Judges  is  a  Book.  Pro- 
verbs is  a  Book.  Micah's  Prophecy  is  a 
Book.  St.  Luke's  Gospel  is  a  Book.  St. 
Paul's  Epistle  to  Titus  is  a  Book.  The 
Books  are  different  in  size.  Isaiah  has  sixty- 
six  chapters ;  Philemon  has  one  chapter. 
They  were  written  at  different  times  :  parts 
of  Genesis  perhaps  two  thousand  years  be- 
fore Christ ;  St.  John's  Gospel  perhaps  fifty 
years  after  Christ.  And  yet  all  these  Books 
together  make  one  Book,  the  Book  of  God, 
the  Book  of  Grace,  the  Book  of  Revelation. 

What  do  I  mean  by  Revelation  ?  I  mean 
that  men  cannot   find   out  about  God,  and 


ABOUT  THE  BOOK  9 

His  Purposes,  and  His  Redemption,  and 
His  Heaven,  by  their  own  learning  and  skill, 
just  as  they  find  out  about  Chemistry  and 
Astronomy  and  Medicine.  God  has  to  re- 
veal it,  to  unveil  it,  to  drav^  aside  the  curtain 
that  hides  it  all  from  our  eyes.  That  is 
Revelation.  That  is  vv^hat  the  Bible  does 
for  us. 

Why  is  our  Bible  in  two  Parts  ?  and  why 
are  they  called  the  Old  Testament  and  the 
New  ?  You  know  that  in  Church  we  read 
chapters  in  the  Bible  which  are  appointed 
as  Lessons  for  the  day.  The  Jews  have 
always  had  Lessons  too,  only  they  are  from 
the  Book  which  we  call  the  Old  Testament. 
If  you  look  at  the  Book  of  Acts  (xiii.  15), 
you  will  find  that  in  the  synagogue  or  place 
of  worship  there  was  "  the  reading  of  the 
law  and  the  prophets"  (see  also  Luke  iv.  17  ; 
Acts  XV.  21).  Now  in  St.  Paul's  Second 
Epistle  to  the  Corinthians  (iii.  14)  he  speaks 
of  this,  and  calls  what  was  read  the  '^old 
testament "  ;  but  the  Greek  word  he  uses 
generally  means  "  covenant,"  and  St.  Paul 
means  that  the  Books  that  were  read  tell 
of  the  old  covenant  or  agreement  which 
God    made    with    men    in    the    earlier  ages, 


10     THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

particularly  with  Abraham.  In  the  same 
chapter  he  calls  himself  a  minister  of  a 
"new  testament,"  by  which  he  means 
God's  new  covenant,  the  Gospel  which 
he  preached.  And  in  the  Epistle  to  the 
Hebrews  vou  will  find  both  the  covenants  or 
testaments  mentioned  in  one  verse  (ix.  15). 
So  in  the  Early  Church  the  two  great  divi- 
sions of  the  Bible  came  to  be  called  the  Old 
and  New  Covenants  or  Testaments.  The 
word  Testament  was  used  by  the  Romans, 
and  we  got  it  from  them. 

One  other  question.  Why  is  the  Bible 
called  the  Holy  Scriptures  ?  "  Scripture " 
simply  means  Writing.  The  New  Testa- 
ment calls  the  Old  Testament  "the  Writ- 
ings" or  "Scriptures,"  thus  : — 

"  That  the  scriptures  of  the  prophets  might  be 
fulfilled,"  Matt.  xxvi.  56. 

"  He  expounded  unto  them  in  all  the  scriptures," 
Luke  xxiv.  27. 

"  That  they  might  understand  the  scriptures," 
Luke  xxiv.  45. 

"  Paul  .  .  .  reasoned  with  them  out  of  the 
scriptures,"  Acts  xvii.  2. 

"  They  .  .  .  searched  the  scriptures  daily," 
Acts  xvii.  1 1 . 

**  An  eloquent  man,  and  mighty  in  the  scrip- 
tures," Acts  xviii.  24. 


ABOUT  THE  BOOK  ii 

**  Showing    by    the    scriptures   that   Jesus    was 

Christ,"  Acts  xviii.  28. 
"That  we  through  comfort   of  the    scriptures 

might  have  hope/'  Rom.  xv.  4. 
**  Christ    died    for    our    sins    according    to    the 

scriptures,"  i  Cor.  xv.  3. 
"  Rose  again  .   .   .  according  to  the  scriptures," 

I  Cor.  XV.  4. 

The    Lord   Jesus    Himself   called    the    Old 
Testament  "the  Scriptures."     Thus, — 

**  Did  ye  never  read  in  the  scriptures  .  .  .  ? " 
Matt.  xxi.  42. 

**  Ye  do  err,  not  knowing  the  scriptures," 
Matt.  xxii.  29. 

**  How  then  shall  the  scriptures  be  ful- 
filled .  .   .  ?"  Matt.  xxvi.  54. 

"  Search  []or.  Ye  search,  R.V.]]  the  scriptures," 
John  V.  39. 

In  these  cases  the  whole  Old  Testament 
is  referred  to.  But  sometimes  Jesus,  or  one 
of  the  Apostles  or  Evangelists,  refers  to  one 
particular  passage  in  the  Old  Testament, 
and  thus  the  word  used  is  "  Scripture." 
Thus, — 

"This   day  is    this    scripture    fulfilled,"   Luke 

iv.  21. 
"  Hath   not    the   scripture   said   .   .    .  ? "    John 

vii.  42. 


12     THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

"  That  the  scripture  might  be  fulfilled,"  John 
xiii.  1 8,  xvii.  12,  xix.  24,  28,  36,  37. 

*'  They  knew  not  the  scripture,  that  He  .  .  ,  " 
John  XX.  9. 

**This  scripture  must  needs  have  been  fulfilled," 
Acts  i.  16. 

**  The    scripture    which    he    read,"    Acts    viii. 

32»  35- 
"  What    saith    the    scripture  ?  "    Rom.   iv.     3  ; 

Gal.  iy.  30. 
*' The    scripture   saith,"    Rom.   ix.    17,  x.   11, 

xi.  2  ;    I  Tim.  v.  18  ;  Jas.  ii.  23,  iv.  5. 
"  The    royal  law  according  to  the    scripture," 

Jas.  ii.  8. 

Twice    we    find    the   words    "  Holy    Scrip- 
tures "  : — 

"  Which  He  had  promised  afore  by  His  prophets 
in  the  holy  scriptures,"  Rom,  i.  2. 

"  From  a  child  thou  hast  known  the  holy 
scriptures,"  2  Tim.  iii.  15. 

But  I  must  tell  you  that  the  Greek  words 
in  these  two  verses  are  not  the  same.  In 
Romans  the  words  are  graphais  hagiais^  but 
in  Timothy  they  are  hiera  grammata.  It  is 
right  that  the  difference  in  such  important 
words  should  be  clear  to  us  English  readers, 
so  the  Revised  Version  puts  "  holy  scrip- 
tures "    in   Romans,  and   "  sacred  writings  '* 


ABOUT  THE  BOOK  13 

in  Timothy.  The  Greek  word  in  Romans 
is  the  same  that  is  translated  "scriptures" 
everywhere  else  ;  while  the  Greek  word  in 
Timothy  is  the  same  as  is  in  John  v.  47, 
where  our  Lord  speaks  of  the  "writings" 
of  Moses. 

But  after  all,  the  meaning  is  really 
the  same.  The  "  sacred  writings "  which 
Timothy  knew  so  well  were  the  "holy 
scriptures"  of  the  Old  Testament;  and  it 
is  a  grand  thing  when  one  can  look  back 
over  past  years  and  say,  "  Yes,  I  have 
known  and  loved  God's  Library  of  Books, 
the  Sacred  Writings  He  inspired,  ever  since 
I  was  a  child  !  " 


CHAPTER   II 

ABOUT    THE    OLD    TESTAMENT 

Let   us   now   look   at   some   of   the   Books 

of  the    Old    Testament,   and    think   of  the 

men  who  wrote  them. 

Look  at  the  first  page  of  your  Bible.     The 

Book  of  Genesis  :  why  is  it  called  Genesis  ? 

The  word  is   Greek,  and    means  Beginning, 

This   is  the   Book  of  the    Beginning.     See 

the   first   words:     "In   the  Beginning  God 

created    the  heaven   and   the  earth."     Who 

first  wrote  that  ?     Perhaps  Moses  did  ;    but 

we  are  not  told  that  he  did.     It  mav  have 

been  written   long  before  his  time;    and  it 

may  have  been  taken  by  him,  or  by  some  one 

else  after  him,  from  a  much  older  writing. 

But  whether   Moses  or    some  one    else  first 

wrote  it,  or  copied  it,  how  did  the  first  writer 

know  that    God   created  heaven  and  earth  ? 

No   one   was   there   to   see  !     Most   of  the 

»4 


THE  OLD  TESTAMENT        15 

histories  in  the  Bible  men  could  find  out  for 
themselves  without  God  telling  them  ;  but 
how  could  any  man  tell  what  God  did  before 
men  were  created  r  One  thing  is  clear. 
Either  somebody  guessed  it,  or  else  God  told 
it  to  him. 

You  know  that  there  have  been  wonder- 
ful discoveries  in  Eastern  lands  in  the  last 
fifty  years.  Underneath  the  sand  of  the 
deserts,  and  amid  old  ruins,  men  have  found 
thousands  of  very  ancient  bricks  covered 
with  strange  characters.  These  bricks  are 
the  papers  and  letters  and  books  of  nations 
that  lived  many  centuries  ago,  and  the  way 
to  read  them  has  also  been  discovered.  Now 
on  some  of  these  bricks  has  been  found  an 
account  of  the  Creation,  which  is  rather 
like  the  account  in  Genesis,  though  partly 
very  different.  Did  God  tell  the  man  who 
wrote  those  bricks  about  it  ?  No,  I  think 
not ;  but  God  had  very  likely  told  it  to 
men  before  that  time — perhaps  to  the  very 
first  men  who  lived  on  the  earth  ;  and  while 
some  afterwards  wrote  it  down  badly,  God 
guided  one  man  to  write  it  properly,  and 
his  writing  we  have  in  Genesis.  We  cannot 
be  sure  of  all  this  ;  but  one  thing  is  certain , 


i6     THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

that  the  First  Chapter  of  Genesis  is  the 
most  wonderful  narrative  ever  written,  and 
we  may  truly  say  ive  know  that  it  was  not 
invented  by  a  man,  but  revealed  by  God. 

Now  about  the  rest  of  the  Book  of 
Genesis.  Do  you  know  what  an  editor  is  ? 
Every  newspaper  or  magazine  that  is  pub- 
lished has  an  editor.  Does  he  write  the 
newspaper  or  the  magazine  ?  He  may  per- 
haps write  a  little  of  it,  but  the  greater  part 
is  written  by  others,  and  he  takes  their 
writings  and  puts  them  together  in  good 
order.  When  you  were  younger  and  were 
learning  to  read,  you  very  likely  used  a 
book  called  a  Reader^  which  had  in  it 
stories  and  verses  and  other  interesting  things. 
That  book  had  an  editor,  who  chose  both 
new  pieces  and  pieces  written  long  before, 
and  arranged  them  for  you.  Now  learned 
men  who  have  examined  the  Book  of  Genesis 
very  closely  tell  us  that  it  had  an  editor, 
perhaps  one  editor  after  another.  It  was 
not  written  or  put  together  all  at  once. 
Parts  were  written  at  different  times  and  in 
different  places.  Very  likely  Moses  was 
one  of  the  editors ;  very  likely  he  wrote 
parts  himself,  and  put  in  other  writings  that 


THE  OLD  TESTAMENT         17 

were  written  long  before  his  time ;  and 
very  likely  other  editors  after  him  may  have 
added  parts.  It  used  to  be  said  that  the  art 
of  writing  was  not  known  in  those  early 
days ;  but  books  and  letters  ruid  papers  have 
now  been  actually  discovered  which  were 
then  written,  and  they  are  now  in  our 
museums.  But  the  great  thing  is  that  God 
guided  the  writers  and  the  editors  to  prepare 
what  He  wanted  us  all  to  know. 

And  so  with  the  other  Books  which  we 
call  the  Books  of  Moses, — Exodus,  Leviti- 
cus, Numbers,  Deuteronomy, — which  with 
Genesis  make  up  what  we  call  the  Penta- 
teuch, a  Greek  word  meaning  a  five-volume 
Book.  They  tell  us  a  great  deal  about 
Moses,  what  he  said  and  did,  and  he  must 
have  written  much  that  is  in  them.  His 
writing  down  the  things  that  happened,  and 
the  words  of  God,  is  actually  mentioned  in 
several  places  :   thus, — 

"  The  Lord  said  unto  Moses,  Write  this  for  a 
memorial  in  a  book  ..."  Exod.  xvii. 
14. 

"  Moses  wrote  all  the  words  of  the  Lord. 
.  .  .  And  he  took  the  book  of  the 
covenant,  and  read  in  the  audience  of  the 
people."      Exod.  xxiv.  4,  7. 

B 


1 8     THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

•'  Moses   wrote    their  goings    out    according   to 

their  journeys."     Numb,  xxxiii.  2. 
"  When  Moses  had  made  an  end  of  writing  the 

words    of    this    law    in    a    book    ..." 

Deut.  xxxi.  24. 
"  Observe  to  do  according  to  all  the  law  which 

Moses  my  servant  commanded  thee.   .   .   . 

This  book  of  the  law  shall  not  depart  out 

of  thy  mouth."     Josh.  i.   7,  8  ;   see  also 

xxiii.  6. 

And  the  "  book  of  Moses "  mentioned 
hundreds  of  years  afterwards,  in  2  Chron. 
XXV.  4,  xxxv.  12,  Ezra  vi.  18,  Neh.  xiii.  i, 
was  certainly  the  Pentateuch. 

But  these  books  also  had  editors.  We  can 
all  see  a  little  of  this,  because  the  last  chapter 
of  Deuteronomy  tells  of  the  death  of  Moses, 
and  therefore  must  have  been  written  after 
him  ;  but  learned  men  say  that  much  more 
than  that  was  put  together  a  long  time  after. 
We  do  not  know  for  certain  about  this ; 
but  it  really  makes  no  difference.  We  are 
quite  sure  that  whoever  wrote  or  edited 
these  Books  was  guided  by  God  to  produce 
what  would  be  fit  for  His  great  Book  and 
profitable  to  all  who  would  read  it  properly. 

Then  come  what  we  call  the  Historical 
Books,  from  Joshua  to  Esther.     We  do  not 


THE  OLD  TESTAMENT        19 

know  who  wrote  any  of  them.  But  we  find 
in  them  many  references  to  books  written 
before,  which  we  have  not  got,  such  as  the 
Book  of  Jasher  (Josh.  x.  13),  the  Books  of 
Nathan  and  Gad  (i  Chron.  xxix.  29),  the 
Book  of  the  Acts  of  Solomon  (i  Kings  xi. 
41),  the  Books  of  the  Chronicles  of  the 
Kings  of  Israel  and  Judah,  one  or  other  of 
which  is  referred  to  more  than  thirty  times 
(the  "  Chronicles "  we  have  are  quite  dif- 
ferent), and  several  others.  So  no  doubt  the 
Books  we  have  were  put  together  by  editors 
who  used  writings  which  they  had  before. 
And  if  you  ask  why  these  have  been  pre- 
served through  such  long  ages  while  so  many 
others  were  lost,  I  answer,  These  are  the 
Books  whose  writers  and  editors  God  had 
guided,  and  which  were  by  and  by  to  be 
part  of  his  great  Book  of  Scriptures. 

Some  of  the  Historical  Books  were  no 
doubt  written  long  after  the  events  which 
they  record.  The  two  Books  of  Chronicles, 
for  instance,  were  written  after  the  Captivity. 
But  this  does  not  make  them  less  valuable. 
They  may  be  more  valuable,  just  as  Green's 
History  of  England  is  more  valuable  than 
Hume's,  though  written  a  century  later. 


20     THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

In  the  Book  of  Psalms,  there  are  150 
Psalms.  Of  these,  73,  or  nearly  half,  are 
said  to  have  been  written  by  King  David  ; 
27  by  Asaph,  Heman,  the  sons  of  Korah,  and 
other  persons ;  while  50  have  no  name  to 
them.  We  are  not  sure  that  David  did 
write  all  the  73,  because  the  little  titles  to 
the  Psalms  were  added  long  after,  and  may 
not  all  be  correct.  But  yet  the  whole  Book 
came  afterwards  to  be  called  "the  Psalms 
of  David  "  ;  and  this  shows  us  that  a  book 
may  sometimes  have  had  one  author's  name 
put  to  it  even  when  he  did  not  write  it  all. 
It  was  so,  for  instance,  with  the  Book  of 
Proverbs,  often  called  the  "  Proverbs  of  Solo- 
mon," although  it  includes  some  written  by 
other  men. 

In  the  Books  of  the  Prophets,  or  at  least  in 
most  of  them,  we  no  doubt  have  the  writings 
of  the  men  named.  They  both  spoke  and 
wrote  down  God's  messages  to  the  people. 
Yet  there  are  chapters  in  some  of  these 
Books  which  were  written  by  others.  For 
instance,  in  Jeremiah  there  are  several 
chapters  which  tell  us  incidents  in  his  life  ; 
and  probably  his  friend  Baruch  may  have 
written  these. 


THE  OLD  TESTAMENT        21 

I  now  want  to  give  you  an  idea  of  the 
kind  of  teaching  we  may  get  out  of  these 
ancient  books,  even  when  at  first  sight 
they  do  not  seem  to  have  much  concern 
with  us.  We  shall  thus  see  a  little  more 
clearly  why  we  may  call  the  whole  collec- 
tion God's  Word. 

Here  is  a  book — The  Book  of  Judges — 
which  sometimes  we  are  tempted  to  think 
not  very  profitable.  It  is  full  of  records  of 
sin  of  every  kind,  of  violence  and  deceit 
and  wicked  passions  ;  and  there  is  much 
that  is  very  unpleasant  reading.  Why  did 
God  let  us  have  such  a  book  in  His  Holy 
Scriptures  ?  Well,  for  one  thing,  the  his- 
tories of  Deborah  and  Gideon  and  Samson, 
at  all  events,  are  not  only  very  interesting, 
but  give  us  solemn  lessons.  But  besides 
these  particular  narratives,  there  is  wonder- 
ful teaching  m  the  very  structure  of  a 
large  part  of  the  book.  We  find  seven 
narratives  which  (or  at  least  six  of  them) 
can  be  divided  into  four  parts,  which  parts 
we  may  call  Sin,  Suffering,  Supplication, 
Salvation.  Look  at  the  3rd  chapter,  ver. 
7,  "  The  children  of  Israel  did  evil  .  .  ." 
— there  is  the  Sin.     Ver.  8,  "  Therefore  the 


22     THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

anger  of  the  Lord  was  hot  against  Israel, 
and  He  sold  them  .  .  .  and  the  children 
of  Israel  served  .  .  ." — there  is  the  Suffer- 
ing. Ver.  9,  "The  children  of  Israel  cried 
unto  the  Lord  " — there  is  the  Supplication. 
Ver.  9  again,  "The  Lord  raised  up  a  de- 
liverer .  .  ." — there  is  the  Salvation.  Now 
exactly  the  same  phrases  occur  again  and 
again.  Look  at  chap.  iii.  12-15  ;  iv.  1-3, 
15  ;  vi.  I,  6,  12  ;  X.  6,  7,  10  ;  xi.  I  ;  xiii.  I, 
24,  25.  Why,  the  Book  of  Judges  is  trans- 
formed when  we  see  this  ! — and  we  thank 
God  for  letting  its  sad  history  be  recorded. 

Again,  some  people  do  not  often  read 
the  Books  of  Chronicles ;  and  many  learned 
men  say  they  are  not  so  important  as  the 
Books  of  Samuel  and  Kings,  which  con- 
tain nearly  the  same  history,  but  generally 
fuller.  Well,  the  Kings  give  us  the  ac- 
counts of  Elijah  and  EHsha,  which  the 
Chronicles  do  not ;  but  the  Chronicles  tell 
us  much  about  David  and  Hezekiah  which 
we  do  not  find  anywhere  else.  And  there 
is  a  feature  of  Chronicles  which  is  gener- 
ally missed,  just  as  the  feature  of  Judges 
mentioned  above  is  missed.  The  Second 
Book  again  and  again   describes  in  a  word 


THE  OLD  TESTAMENT        23 

or  two  the  spiritual  character  of  the  king. 
Rehoboam  "  prepared  not  (R.V.  set  not) 
his  heart  to  seek  the  Lord"  (xii.  14).  But 
Jehoshaphat  did  (xix.  3),  who  also  had  his 
heart  "  lifted  up  in  the  ways  of  the  Lord  *' 
(xvii.  6).  Asa  had  a  "  perfect  heart  "  (xv. 
17).  Amaziah  did  right,  but  "not  with  a 
perfect  heart "  (xxv.  2).  Jotham  "  prepared 
(R.V.  ordered)  his  ways  before  the  Lord" 
(xxvii.  6).  Uzziah,  though  he  "  sought 
God"  (xxvi.  5),  had  his  heart  "lifted  up" 
differently  from  Jehoshaphat,  for  it  was 
"to  his  destruction"  (xxvi.  16).  Hezekiah 
served  God  "  with  all  his  heart,  and  pros- 
pered"  (xxxi.  21),  and  yet  his  heart,  too, 
was  "lifted  up"  in  a  wrong  way  (xxxii. 
25).  Josiah's  heart  was  "tender,"  and  he 
"declined  not"  from  the  right  way  (xxxiv. 
2,  27).  And  the  key  of.  the  whole  will  be 
found  in  chap.  xvi.  9,  where  we  read, 
"  The  eyes  of  the  Lord  run  to  and  fro 
throughout  the  whole  earth,  to  show  Him- 
self strong  in  the  behalf  of  them  whose 
heart  is  perfect  toward  Him."  Surely  this 
feature  of  itself  gives  a  value  to  the  Chron- 
icles. The  Books  of  Kings  have  only  one 
such  notice  (i   K.  xv.  3). 


24     THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

Once  more,  think  of  the  Psalms.  Is  it  not 
a  wonderful  thing  that  these  poetical  prayers 
and  praises,  written  and  sung  two  or  three 
thousand  years  ago,  should  still  be  sung — 
all  of  them  every  month — in  churches  all 
round  the  world  ?  But  let  us  take  one  Psalm, 
and  think  a  little  more  about  it.  Take  the 
Fifty-first.  The  title  of  it  says  that  King 
David  wrote  it  after  his  great  sin.  Some 
learned  men  think  that  it  was  not  David.  It 
really  does  not  matter.  Somebody  wrote  it  ! 
— some  Jew  who  had  deeply  sinned,  two  or 
three  thousand  years  ago.  Think  of  it  ! 
Did  King  David — or  whoever  it  was — sit 
down  to  write  a  psalm  of  penitence  for  other 
people  to  sing,  just  as  Toplady  wrote  "Rock 
of  Ages,"  or  Mr.  Stone  "  Weary  of  earth  and 
laden  with  my  sin  "  ?  Oh,  no  !  That  Psalm 
is  the  genuine  outflow  of  a  sinful  but  peni- 
tent heart.  Then  how  came  he  to  write  it 
down  at  all  ?  When  you  kneel  down  and 
confess  to  God  (in  your  own  words),  you  do 
not  presently  get  up  and  write  down  the 
words  you  said  to  Him  !  No  one  can  say 
why  that  sorrowful  man  did  so,  except  that 
God  led  him  to  do  it ;  and  when  he  did,  we 
may  be  sure  that  he  never  dreamed  that  his 


THE  OLD  TESTAMENT        25 

words  would  be  read  and  sung  now !  And 
then,  how  came  his  words  to  be  kept  after 
his  death  ?  How  came  they  to  be  copied  ? 
How  came  they  into  the  collection  of  Psalms 
made  long  afterwards  ?     Who  can  tell  ? 

Yet  the  day  came  when  those  touching 
words  of  penitence  were  translated  into  other 
languages  !  —  into  Greek,  into  Syriac,  into 
Latin  ;  by  and  by  into  English  ! — and  now 
into  the  languages  of  Africa  and  Asia  and 
the  Islands  of  the  Sea  !  And  if  you  at  any 
time  have  sinned,  and  go  on  your  knees  before 
God  in  penitence,  and  do  not  know  what  to 
say,  you  can  tah  that  Psalm  ;  you  can  make 
it  your  own  ;  you  can  say  its  words  to  God. 
Many  have  done  so  I 

Is  not  this  proof  enough  that  God  inspired 
it  ?  And  we  see  a  little  of  what  inspiration 
really  was.  Men  wrote  quite  naturally  what 
they  thought  and  felt  and  wanted  to  say  at  the 
time,  never  thinking  that  they  were  writing 
for  God's  great  Book  of  Scripture.  But  He 
knew  ;  He  was  guiding  them  ;  He  let  book 
after  book  and  writing  after  writing  be  lost, 
while  He  let  these  particular  writings  be  copied 
and  preserved,  that  they  might  be  for  the 
good  of  His  people  as  long  as  the  world  lasts! 


CHAPTER   III 

ABOUT    THE    OLD    TESTAMENT  :    THE 
CANON    AND    THE    LANGUAGES 

We  have  seen  how  the  Books  of  the  Old 
Testament  came  to  be  written.  But  how 
came  they  to  be  collected  together  ?  and  how 
was  it  known  that  these  and  no  others  were 
God*s  inspired  Scriptures  ? 

It  is  believed  that  the  first  collection  was 
made  by  Ezra  the  Scribe  ;  and  it  was  com- 
pleted by  other  good  men  who  followed 
him.  We  may  be  quite  sure  that  if  God 
guided  the  original  writers  of  the  Books, 
He  also  guided  those  who  collected  them, 
choosing  some  books  and  not  choosing  others 
like  the  Books  of  Nathan  and  Gad,  which 
I  mentioned  in  our  last  chapter.  Long 
before  the  time  of  our  Lord,  these  Sacred 
Scriptures  were  complete ;  and  the  whole 
collection   was  what   we  now   call  the  Old 

36 


THE  OLD  TESTAMENT        27 

Testament.  But  the  Jews  did  not  arrange 
the  Books  quite  as  we  do  now.  They  had 
three  divisions,  which  we  find  mentioned 
in  Luke  xxiv.  44  —  "the  Law,  and  the 
Prophets,  and  the  Psalms."  The  "  Law " 
meant  the  Pentateuch.  The  "Prophets" 
included  all  the  Prophetical  Books  except 
Daniel,  and  also  the  Historical  Books  from 
Joshua  to  2nd  Kings  (except  Ruth).  All 
the  rest  were  in  the  third  division,  which 
the  Jews  simply  called  "  Writings ""  ;  and 
probably  it  was  sometimes  called  "  Psalms " 
because  the  Psalms  stood  first  in  it.  After- 
wards this  division  came  to  be  called  "  Sacred 
Writings,"  in  Greek  Hagiographa. 

The  collection  of  Sacred  Books  was  after- 
wards called  the  Canon  of  Scripture.  Canon 
is  a  Greek  word  [kanon)  which  means  a 
measuring  rod  or  line.  A  carpenter  uses 
his  foot-rule,  and  a  draper  uses  his  yard- 
measure  ;  and  these  the  Greeks  would  call 
canons.  So  rules  for  a  school,  or  a  society, 
came  to  be  called  canons ;  and  when  St. 
Paul  tells  the  Galatians  to  "walk  by  this 
rule"  (vi.  16),  the  word  in  the  Greek  is 
kanon.  (See  also  Phil.  iii.  16 ;  2  Cor.  x. 
13,    16.)      The    Church    of    England    has 


28     THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

"canons,"  rules  or  directions  made  in  King 
James  I.'s  time  ;  and  it  has  also  men  called 
Canons,  who  belong  to  the  cathedrals  and 
are  supposed  to  observe  certain  rules  of  life. 
So  the  "  Canon  of  Scripture "  means  that 
the  Books  have  been  fixed  upon  once  for 
all  as  ?narked  off  from  all  other  books,  and 
they  are  called  "  canonical  books." 

Some  years  after  our  Lord's  time  there 
lived  a  Jew  named  Josephus,  who  wrote 
the  history  of  his  nation.  He  mentions 
these  Sacred  Books  of  the  Old  Testament, 
and  says,  "  No  one  has  dared  either  to 
add  anything  to  them,  or  to  take  anything 
from  them,  or  to  alter  anything.  All  Jews 
regard  them  as  the  Teaching  of  God,  and 
abide  by  them,  and  would  gladly  die  for 
them."  We  read  in  the  Gospels  about  the 
Scribes,  who  so  opposed  our  Lord,  and  whom 
He  called  hypocrites,  as  indeed  many  of  them 
were.  But  the  Scribes  did  one  good  thing. 
They  copied  the  old  Sacred  Books  so  care- 
fully as  scarcely  ever  to  make  a  mistake  ; 
and  our  learned  men  believe  that  the  Hebrew 
Old  Testament  which  we  have  now  is  really 
the  same  in  almost  every  line  as  that  which 
was  first  put  together. 


THE  OLD  TESTAMENT        29 

Hebrew  :  yes,  that  was  the  language  in 
which  the  Books  were  written.  The  writers 
were  Hebrews,  which  is  the  oldest  name  of 
the  people  we  call  Jews  (see  Gen.  xiv.  13, 
"  Abram  the  Hebrew "),  and  they  wrote  in 
their  own  tongue,  which  is  called  Hebrew. 
But  after  the  captivity  in  Babylon,  their 
language  gradually  changed,  just  as  English 
has  changed  since  the  time  of  King  Alfred. 
You  could  not  read  the  books  of  King 
Alfred's  days  ;  and  many  Jews  in  the  time 
of  Nehemiah  did  not  well  understand  the 
Hebrew  of  their  own  Scriptures.  So  when 
the  Scriptures  were  read  to  them  in  public 
worship,  the  readers  added  explanations.  We 
find  this  in  the  Book  of  Nehemiah  (viii.  8), 
where  we  read,  "  They  read  in  the  book  of 
the  law  of  God  distinctly,  and  gave  the 
sense,  and  caused  them  to  understand  the 
reading."  These  explanations  would  be  in 
the  every-day  language  that  was  then  spoken. 
This  was  a  small  mixture  of  the  real  Hebrew 
with  a  language  widely  spoken  in  Syria  and 
Chaldea,  and  it  is  usually  called  Aramaic. 
It  was  the  language  spoken  in  Palestine 
when  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ  was  on  earth, 
and    no    doubt    it   was    His   mother-tongue. 


30     THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

But  though  it  was  not  the  ancient  Hebrew, 
it  was  called  Hebrew,  and  we  find  it  called 
so  several  times  in  the  New  Testament. 
When  Pontius  Pilate  wrote  the  words  "  This 
is  the  King  of  the  Jews,*'  to  put  up  on 
the  cross  on  which  Jesus  was  crucified,  in 
"  Hebrew  and  Greek  and  Latin  "  (John  xix. 
20),  the  "  Hebrew  "  was  this  Aramaic  ;  and 
when  St.  Paul  spoke  to  the  angry  crowd 
"  in  the  Hebrew  tongue "  (Acts  xxii.  2),  it 
was  the  Aramaic  that  he  used. 

When  men  learn  Hebrew  now,  as  most 
clergymen  and  many  others  do,  it  is  the  old 
Hebrew  of  the  Sacred  Books  that  they  learn, 
so  that  they  may  read  the  Old  Testament 
as  it  was  first  written.  But  they  find  in  it 
four  bits  of  the  Aramaic  language.  Two 
are  in  the  Book  of  Ezra  (iv.  8  to  vi.  i8, 
and  vii.  12-26,  mostly  copied  from  official 
records) ;  one  is  a  large  part  of  the  Book  of 
Daniel  (ii.  4  to  end  of  vii.) ;  and  one  is  a 
verse  in  Jeremiah  (x.  11),  where  God  gives 
the  Jews  some  exact  words  which  they  are 
to  say  to  the  heathen  in  the  heathen  tongue. 
He  says,  "  Thus  shall  ye  say  unto  them,  The 
gods  that  have  not  ?nade  the  heavens  and  the 
earthy  even   they  shall  perish  from    the   earthy 


THE  OLD  TESTAMENT        31 

and  froyn  under  these  heavens^  The  words 
from  "the  gods"  to  "heavens"  are  in  the 
foreign  language.  It  is  just  as  if  you  were 
going  to  France  to  meet  a  French  friend, 
and  I  said  to  you,  "  When  you  meet  him, 
say,  Bon  jour ^  monsieur ^"^ 

To  this  day  the  Jews  in  their  synagogues 
read  the  Scriptures  in  the  old  Hebrew. 
They  are  not  in  books  like  ours,  but  in 
large  rolls,  which  have  to  be  unrolled  for 
reading ;  and  they  are  not  printed,  but 
written.  The  words,  too,  are  curious,  be- 
cause there  are  no  vowels,  but  only  con- 
sonants. For  instance,  Samuel  would  be 
written  SML,  and  David  DVD.  But  if 
you  had  to  read  DVD  aloud,  how  would 
you  say  it  ?  You  would  not  know  whether 
the  letters  stood  for  Dovad,  or  Divudy  or 
Devody  or  David.  Well,  the  scribes  who 
had  to  read  the  Books  in  ancient  times 
invented  a  way  of  showing  how  the  words 
should  be  read,  by  putting  dots  or  "  points " 
over  or  under  them.  If  we  imitated  this 
in  English,  we  might  do  it  thus  : — D^VjD. 
How  to  do  this  was  passed  on  from  one  to 
another  for  hundreds  of  years,  and  at  last, 
about    the    year    800    a.d.,    some     learned 


32     THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

Jews  settled  it  once  for  all ;  and  as  they 
fixed  what  had  been  handed  down^  that  is 
the  tradition — the  Hebrew  word  for  which 
is  Massora — they  were  called  Massoretes. 
There   is   a   copy   of  their   Old   Testament, 


:  r\v^^^r^  D^nisn  zi^-'  hdv  ]s^v3  :ini 
n-i-ii];  twvy\  vrn^A  anD^^  '•^dS  3 

SPECIMEN   OF    HEBREW    BIBLE,    WITH   POINTS. 

made    by    them    (or    a    little    later)    in    the 
British   Museum. 

I  mentioned  just  now  the  Aramaic  lan- 
guage, which  the  Jews  in  Palestine  and  the 
East  spoke  after  the  Captivity,  and  in  the 
time  of  our  Lord,  and  that  the  Hebrew 
Scriptures  had  to  be  explained  by  the  scribes 
to  the  people  in  that  language.  Some  of 
these  explanations  were  written  down,  and 
called  Targums,  which  means  interpretations ; 


THE  OLD  TESTAMENT        33 

and  some  of  these  Targums  are  still  in 
the  hands  of  the  Jews,  and  are  very  in- 
teresting. 

Another  interesting  fact  is  that  the  Sama- 
ritans, the  people  living  in  that  part  of 
Palestine  called  Samaria,  whom  the  Jews 
hated  and  despised  (see  John  iv.  9),  had  a 
copy  of  the  Pentateuch  of  their  own,  very 
like  the  old  Hebrew.  There  is  a  little  band 
of  Samaritans  still  living  on  Mount  Gerizim, 
and  they  regard  their  Pentateuch  as  a  great 
treasure,  though  it  is  not  quite  the  same  as 
the  original  one. 

In  some  of  our  Bibles,  particularly  in 
large  Bibles  used  in  church,  you  will  find 
several  Books  between  the  Old  and  New 
Testaments,  which  are  not  in  the  Bibles 
that  most  of  us  use.  These  are  old  Jewish 
books  which  were  not  put  into  the  Canon 
of  Scripture,  and  which  therefore  we  do 
not  believe  to  be  part  of  the  inspired  Word 
of  God.  Why,  then,  are  they  put  in  some 
Bibles  ?  We  shall  see  in  another  chapter 
how  this  is.  I  only  want  to  say  now  that 
most  of  them  are  good  books,  and  very 
interesting.  Two  of  them,  the  Books  of 
Maccabees,   tell  us  much  of  the   history  of 

c 


34     THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

the  Jews  between  Old  and  New  Testament 
times ;  and  two  of  them,  called  "  Wisdom  '* 
and  "  Ecclesiasticus,"  contain  much  that  is 
profitable  for  reading.  One  of  them,  called 
"the  Song  of  the  Three  Children,"  gives 
us  that  beautiful  hymn  called  Benedicite^ 
which  comes  in  our  Prayer-Book  just  after 
the  Te  Deuniy  and  is  sometimes  sung  in 
church.  It  was  supposed  to  be  sung  by 
Shadrach,  Meshach,  and  Abednego,  in  Ne- 
buchadnezzar''s  fiery  furnace  at  Babylon,  as 
we  read  in  the  3rd  chapter  of  Daniel. 
These  Books  are  called  the  Apocrypha^  which 
properly  means  "  hidden  away,"  but  the 
word  came  to  be  used  in  another  sense, 
because  the  Books  were  supposed  by  some 
to  be  part  of  Holy  Scripture,  and  were  not 
really  so.  They  were  never  in  the  Canon 
as  the  ancient  Jews  made  it  up  ;  and  the 
Jewish  historian  Josephus,  whom  I  mentioned 
before,  only  refers  to  one  of  them,  and 
does  not  count  it  as  one  of  the  Sacred 
Books. 

Again,  if  you  read  the  New  Testament 
carefully,  you  will  find  about  two  hundred  and 
eighty  direct  quotations  from  the  Old  Testa- 
ment ;    and    these   are    taken    from    twenty- 


THE  OLD  TESTAMENT        35 

eight  of  the  thirty-nine  Books.^  But  there 
is  not  one  single  clear  quotation  from  the 
Books  of  the  Apocrypha.^  There  is  one 
place,  Heb.  xi.  33-37,  where  some  particulars 
of  the  sufferings  of  God's  people  are  derived 
from  the  Books  of  Maccabees,  but  there  is 
no  quotation  of  them  as  Scripture ;  while 
similar  references  to  the  canonical  Books 
are  several  hundred  in  number.  Now  we 
cannot  say  that  the  Apostles  and  others  who 
wrote  the  New  Testament  were  ignorant 
of  the  Apocrypha.  We  shall  see  directly 
that  they  must  have  known  at  least  some 
of  it.  So  it  is  clear  that  they  knew  the 
difference  between  it  and  the  real  Canon. 

I  want  you  now  to  think  of  the  early 
Christians  scattered  throughout  Asia  Minor, 
Greece,  Italy,  Egypt,  and  many  other  lands, 

1  A  list  of  the  quotations,  and  of  other  allusions 
to  the  O.T.J  is  given  in  the  Oxford  Helps  to  the 
Sttidy  of  the  Bible,  p.  87. 

2  There  are  three  or  four  passages  in  the  N.T. 
which  look  like  quotations,  and  which  are  not 
found  in  the  O.T.  One  or  two  of  these  have  a 
certain  likeness  to  passages  in  the  Apocrypha ; 
but  Westcott  {Bible  in  the  Church,  pp.  46-49) 
shows  that  they  can  scarcely  be  quoted  from 
those  passages. 


36     THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

the  converts  of  St.  Paul  and  the  other 
Apostles.  What  "  Bible  "  did  they  use  ?  Of 
course  they  had  at  first  only  the  Old  Testa- 
ment. But  how  could  they  read  Hebrew 
books  ?  Certainly  many  of  them  were  Jews, 
but,  as  I  told  you  before,  the  old  Hebrew 
language  was  not  spoken  at  that  time  even 
in  Palestine  ;  while  these  foreign  Jews,  and 
their  fathers  and  grandfathers,  had  for  a 
century  or  two  been  settled  in  the  Heathen 
countries  just  mentioned,  and  their  languages 
from  childhood  were  the  languages  of  these 
countries.  We  have  a  little  glimpse  of  this 
in  Acts  ii.  8-11.  Probably  very  few  of 
them  could  read  Hebrew ;  and  of  course 
the  Gentile  Christians  could  not.  But  God 
had  done  a  wonderful  thing.  He  had  caused 
the  Greek  language  to  spread  gradually  over 
all  these  lands,  in  fact  over  the  larger  part 
of  the  great  Roman  Empire  ;  so  when  the 
New  Testament  Books  came  to  be  written, 
they  were  written  in  Greek,  and  vast 
numbers  of  Christians  could  understand 
them.  But  this  does  not  answer  my 
question.  What  about  the  Books  of  the 
Old  Testament  ?  How  could  they  be 
understood  ? 


THE  OLD  TESTAMENT        37 

Well,  about  200  years  before  Christ,  some 
learned  Jews  who  lived  at  the  great  city  of 
Alexandria,  in  Egypt,  set  to  work  to  make 
a  Greek  translation  of  their  old  Hebrew 
Sacred  Books.  It  is  said  that  about  seventy 
men  shared  in  the  work,  and  so  the  Version 
came  to  be  known  as  the  Septuagint,  which 
means  "seventy."  We  usually  write  it,  for 
short,  in  the  Roman  numeral  letters  for 
seventy,  "  LXX."  When  you  see  in  any 
book  about  the  Bible  those  letters,  LXX, 
you  will  know  that  they  stand  for  the  Greek 
Version  of  the  Old  Testament. 

Now  this  was  the  Version  used  by  vast 
numbers  of  the  early  Christians.  When 
Timothy  in  his  childhood  studied  the  Holy 
Scriptures  (or  "  Sacred  Writings "),  we  may 
be  sure  that  it  was  the  Septuagint  that  was 
in  his  hand.  When  we  read  in  Acts  xvii. 
that  the  people  of  Berea  "searched  the 
Scriptures  daily,"  we  may  be  sure  that 
it  was  the  Greek  Septuagint  that  they 
searched.  When  St.  Paul  in  his  epistles, 
which  were  of  course  in  Greek,  quotes 
passages  from  the  Old  Testament,  he  gener- 
ally uses  the  Septuagint  Version  word  by 
word,   though    sometimes    he   takes    the   old 


38     THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

Hebrew   and    gives    his    own    Greek   words 
for  it. 

Now  the  Jews  at  Alexandria  were  not 
so  particular  about  the  Canon  as  the  Jews 
in  Palestine ;  and  they  included  in  their 
collection  some  of  the  Books  which  we  call 
the  Apocrypha.  But  they  did  not  translate 
them  ;  for  these  Books  were  written,  not  in 
the  old  Hebrew,  but  in  Greek,  so  they  were 
all  ready  for  use  without  further  trouble. 
No  doubt  the  "Seventy"  learned  men 
thought  them  useful — as  indeed  they  are  ; 
and  therefore  they  put  them  in  with  the 
others  which  belonged  to  the  true  Canon. 
Well,  this  being  so,  it  is  clear  that  St.  Paul 
and  the  other  writers  of  the  New  Testament 
knew    those    books,    and    might   easily  have 

Let  me  try  to  illustrate  this.  Suppose  in  a 
French  book  there  were  the  words  ''''  IL  fait  froid 
aujourd^huiP  Suppose  in  an  English  translation 
of  that  book  these  words  were  rendered,  rather 
freely,  "We  have  got  cold  weather  to-day." 
Suppose  that  I  in  a  letter  said  that  in  that  French 
book  you  would  find  the  phrase,  "  It  is  cold  to- 
day." A  scholar  carefully  examining  my  letter 
would  see  at  once  that  I  quoted,  not  from  the 
English  translation,  but  direct  from  the  French 
original. 


THE  OLD  TESTAMENT        39 

quoted  from  them  good  words  which  were 
actually  in  the  Scripture  rolls  used  by  the 
converts.  Yet  they  did  not.  Why  not  ? 
Must  it  not  have  been  because  they  knew 
the  difference  between  the  Sacred  Books 
of  the  real  Canon  and  those  which  the 
"  Seventy "  at  Alexandria  had  put  in  with 
them  ? 

Now  is  it  not  wonderful  how  God  watched 
over  and  guided  these  Sacred  Books,  His  Holy 
Scriptures  ? — the  writers,  the  copyists,  the 
translators,  the  interpreters  1  Why  did  He  r 
Surely  because  those  Holy  Scriptures  are  able 
to  make  us  wise  unto  salvation,  through  faith 
which  is  in  Christ  Jesus  ! 


CHAPTER  IV 

ABOUT  THE  NEW  TESTAMENT  BOOKS: 
THE  WRITERS  AND  THE  CANON 

We  have  seen  that  the  first  Christians  had  a 
"  Bible,"  a  collection  of  Sacred  Books  which 
they  called  "the  Scriptures,"  and  that  these 
were  the  same  which  we  now  call  the  Old 
Testament.  They  did  not  know  there  was 
to  be  another  collection.  We  are  better  off 
than  they  were,  because  we  have  the  other. 
We  have  four  Books  which  tell  us  about  the 
life  of  the  Lord  Jesus  on  earth,  and  one  which 
gives  us  some  fragments  of  the  earliest  history 
of  the  Church,  and  twenty-one  letters  of  the 
Apostles,  and  a  wonderful  book  of  vision 
and  prophecies ;  and  we  call  these  the  New 
Testament.  Let  us  see  who  wrote  these 
Books,  and  how  they  came  to  be  written. 
After    the    Lord    Jesus    had   ascended    to 

heaven,  and  the  Holy  Spirit  had  come  down 

40 


NEW  TESTAMENT  BOOKS     41 

on  the  Day  of  Pentecost,  what  had  the 
Apostles,  and  other  disciples  who  had  been 
with  Jesus,  got  to  do  ?  First,  they  had  to 
tell  the  Jews  in  Palestine  that  Jesus,  the 
Teacher  from  Nazareth  whom  Pilate  the 
Roman  Governor  had  crucified,  was  the 
Messiah,  the  Anointed  King  and  Saviour 
whom  God  had  promised  to  send,  and  for 
whom  the  pious  people  among  the  Jews  had 
been  looking  ;  that  He  had  risen  from  the 
dead  and  gone  back  to  heaven  ;  that  His 
death,  although  it  had  been  such  a  wicked 
thing  to  kill  Him,  was  really  part  of  God's 
plan  for  redeeming  sinful  men  ;  that  because 
He  had  died  for  sinners,  God  could  and 
would  forgive  them,  and  that  if  they  were 
baptized,  and  joined  the  new  company  of 
believers  in  Jesus  (which  came  presently  to 
be  called  the  Church),  they  too  should  have 
the  Holy  Spirit  to  teach  them  and  make  them 
holy. 

This  was  the  good  news  they  had  to  tell ; 
and  it  came  to  be  called  by  a  Greek  word, 
euaggelion  (pronounced  euangelllon)^  which 
means  "  good  tidings  "  or  "  good  message." 
This  word  becomes  in  Latin  evangeliumy 
and    from    this   we    get   our    English   words 


42     THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

"evangel,"  "evangelize,"  "  evangelist,"  "evan- 
gelical." But  we  commonly  use  an  Anglo- 
Saxon  word,  "  Gospel,"  instead  of  the  Latin 
"  evangel,"  and  as  "  Gospel "  is  a  short  way 
of  saying  "  God's  SpeW  (that  is,  God's  story), 
we  see  that  it  means  the  same  thing.  So  we 
English  people  say  that  the  Apostles  ^^ preached 
the  Gospel:' 

In  the  Acts  we  find  that  this  was  just 
what  they  did  preach,  to  the  Jews,  and  to 
those  Gentiles  or  Heathen  who  had  learned 
from  the  Jews  about  the  true  God.  I  told 
you  in  the  last  chapter  how  many  Jews 
lived  far  away  from  Palestine,  in  Greece  and 
other  countries  in  the  Roman  Empire  ;  and 
wherever  they  were,  they  had  their  syna- 
gogues for  worship,  and  many  Heathen  used 
to  come  and  hear  the  Books  of  the  Old 
Testament  read.  So  we  find  in  the  Acts 
that  what  St.  Paul  preached  at  foreign  cities 
like  Antioch  (in  Pisidia),  and  Thessalonica, 
and  Berea,  and  Corinth,  was  much  the 
same  as  St.  Peter  preached  to  the  Jews  of 
Jerusalem.  When  St.  Paul  went  to  places 
where  the  Heathen  did  not  know  of  the  ex- 
pected Messiah,  as  at  Lystra  and  Athens,  he 
preached  quite  differently.     But  still,  ail  the 


NEW  TESTAMENT  BOOKS     43 

preaching  and  teaching  came  to  this,  that 
Jesus  was  the  true  King  and  Saviour  of  men. 
Even  at  Athens,  where  he  talked  to  very 
clever  men  who  despised  all  Jews  and  cared 
nothing  for  the  old  Sacred  Books,  he  "preached 
Jesus  and  the  resurrection"  (Acts  xvii.  18). 
All  the  teaching  was  built  upon  that,  as  a 
house  is  built  on  its  foundation. 

In  St.  Paul's  1st  Epistle  to  the  Corinthians 
(xv.  1-4),  he  tells  us  exactly  what  the 
"  Gospel "  he  preached  was.  It  was  that 
"  Christ,"  that  is  Jesus  the  Messiah,  "  died  for 
our  sins,"  and  was  buried,  and  was  raised 
again  the  third  day.  Let  us  read  his  words  : 
"I  declare  unto  you  the  Gospel  which  I 
preached  unto  you.  ...  I  delivered  unto 
you  first  of  all  that  which  I  also  received, 
how  that  Christ  died  for  our  sins  according 
to  the  Scriptures ;  and  that  He  was  buried, 
and  that  He  rose  again  the  third  day  accord- 
ing to  the  Scriptures." 

Now  when  this  Gospel  was  preached,  the 
hearers  whose  hearts  were  touched  searched 
in  the  old  Sacred  Books  to  see  if  it  was  true 
that  a  King  and  Saviour  like  that  had  been 
promised  by  God.  See  how  they  did  this  at 
Berea  (Acts  xvii.  11).     I  do  not  suppose  they 


44     THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

had  many  copies.  Perhaps  there  was  only 
one  in  Berea,  a  set  of  rolls  with  the  old 
Scriptures  written  on  them,  kept  at  the  syna- 
gogue ;  and  I  fancy  that  the  Bereans — some 
of  them  Jews  and  some  Gentiles  who  had 
learned  about  the  true  God — came  day  by 
day  to  the  synagogue  and  listened  while  the 
Jewish  scribe  read  from  the  rolls  what  pas- 
sages he  could  find  that  would  confirm  what 
St.  Paul  had  told  them.  But  then  they 
would  want  to  know  rnore  about  Jesus,  that 
wonderful  Person  who  (so  St.  Paul  said)  had 
come  from  heaven,  and  died  for  sinners,  and 
risen  again.  Perhaps  when  St.  Paul  had  left 
Berea,  his  companion  Silas,  who  stayed  behind 
(xvii.  14),  would  teach  them  a  great  deal 
about  the  gracious  words  which  Jesus  had 
spoken  and  the  mighty  things  He  had  done. 
Silas  had  come  from  Jerusalem,  and  perhaps 
he  had  himself  known  Jesus.  And  I  daresay 
they  would  learn  by  heart  much  that  he 
taught  them,  and  repeat  it  to  each  other  after 
he  left.  I  think  it  would  be  so  in  all  the 
places  where  there  were  "  Churches,"  little 
companies  of  Christian  converts ;  for  when 
St.  Paul  wrote  letters  to  them,  he  referred 
to  things  about  Jesus  which  they  must  have 


NEW  TESTAMENT  BOOKS     45 

learned  in  that  way.  These  letters  were  the 
first  Christian  writings  they  had  ;  and  we 
may  be  sure  that  they  greatly  valued  all  that 
came  from  the  Apostles.  They  used  to  read 
the  letters  aloud  when  they  met  together  for 
worship,  as  well  as  the  old  Sacred  Books ; 
and  such  letters  must  have  seemed  to  them, 
even  then,  almost  as  much  true  messages 
from  God  as  the  Sacred  Books  themselves. 

Some  of  these  Apostolic  letters  we  have 
now  ;  twenty-one  of  them,  as  I  said  before. 
We  call  them  the  Epistles,  which  means 
Letters.  There  are  thirteen  by  St.  Paul, 
three  by  St.  John,  two  by  St.  Peter,  one  by 
St.  James,  and  one  by  St.  Jude ;  and  one 
other,  "To  the  Hebrews,"  was  probably 
written  by  one  of  St.  Paul's  friends  and 
companions,  perhaps  Luke,  or  Barnabas,  or 
Apollos.  Did  these  holy  men  know  that 
their  Letters  would  one  day  be  part  of  God's 
Holy  Scriptures  ?  We  cannot  be  sure  about 
this.  I  believe  that  when  St.  Paul  sent  kind 
messages  to  many  Christians  at  Rome  by 
name  (Rom.  xvi.),  he  was  thinking  of  them 
and  not  of  us  ;  that  when  he  told  Timothy 
to  "  take  a  little  wine  for  his  stomach's  sake," 
he  meant  it  for  Timothy  and  was  not  think- 


46     THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

ing  of  men  not  yet  born ;  that  when  he 
wrote  to  Philemon  about  his  runaway  slave, 
he  did  not  know  that  the  letter  would  be 
read  by  slaves  in  Africa  and  America  hun- 
dreds of  years  after.  But  I  believe  that 
when  he  told  the  Romans  and  Corinthians 
and  Ephesians  wonderful  things  about  God 
and  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  he  knew  that  the 
Holy  Spirit  was  teaching  him  what  to  write. 
And  this  also  I  am  sure  of,  that  all  the  while 
God  meant  every  line  and  every  word  to  be 
for  us  Christians  now  and  in  all  ages. 

But  let  us  go  back  to  those  early  Churches, 
at  Ephesus,  and  Philippi,  and  Rome,  and 
Corinth.  How  came  they  to  know  all  about 
our  Lord's  miracles  and  teachings  ?  No 
doubt  they  heard  much  by  word  of  mouth  ; 
but  by  and  by  little  accounts  of  them  were 
made,  and  passed  from  one  place  to  another. 
St.  Luke  mentions  this  in  the  first  sentence 
of  his  Gospel.  He  says,  "  Many  have  taken 
in  hand  to  draw  up  a  narrative  "  (R.V.),  &c. 
It  is  very  likely  that  these  were  short  and 
scrappy,  and  perhaps  written  by  men  who 
had  not  been  with  Jesus,  and  did  not  know 
much.  But  at  last  the  Churches  began  to 
hear  that  something  better  could  be  had. 


NEW  TESTAMENT  BOOKS    47 

Perhaps  one  day  a  Christian  teacher  came 
to  one  of  the  Churches — suppose  we  say 
Caesarea — and  said,  "  Friends,  look  here  !  I 
have  got  a  copy  of  an  account  of  our  Lord's 
life  and  death  and  resurrection,  which  has 
been  written  by  Marcus,  who  was  at  one 
time  with  Paul  and  then  with  Peter.  You 
know  Peter  was  constantly  with  Jesus,  and 
he  has  told  Marcus  all  about  it,  and  Marcus 
has  written  it  down."  Perhaps  he  would 
add,  "  Some  of  you  are  Roman  soldiers : 
well,  you  will  find  that  Marcus  knew  what 
you  would  want,  and  wrote  just  what  would 
suit  you ;  he  explains  those  strange  Jewish 
customs  which  you  don't  understand,  and 
he  uses  your  own  military  terms."  Now 
just  fancy  how  eagerly  those  Christians  would 
meet  together,  and  how  they  would  listen 
(as  we  say)  with  all  their  ears  as  one  of 
their  presbyters  or  deacons  read  out  the 
wonderful  story  !  Some  of  it  they  no  doubt 
knew  before  ;  but  a  great  deal  would  be  new 
to  them. 

This  of  course  was  what  we  call  the 
Gospel  of  St.  Mark.  It  was  not  called  a 
"Gospel"  then.  The  "Gospel"  in  those 
days,  the  euagge/ion,  was  not  a  book.     It  was 


48     THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

the  Message,  the  Glad  Tidings,  which  had 
been  preached  from  the  first,  and  which  all 
the  Christians  knew  already.  But  I  do  not 
wonder  that  in  after  years  the  Four  Books 
about  the  Life  of  the  Son  of  God  upon  earth 
came  to  be  called  "Gospels,"  because  they 
told  all  about  Him  whose  Message  it  was. 

St.  Mark,  as  we  have  seen,  wrote  chiefly 
for  the  Gentile  converts ;  and  I  think  he 
must  have  had  Roman  soldiers  particularly 
in  his  mind.  He  writes  in  such  a  vigorous 
way.  His  narrative  seems  to  march  on  swiftly 
and  steadily,  not  stopping  to  report  long  dis- 
courses. One  Greek  word  meaning  "  straight- 
way *'  or  "  immediately  "  he  uses  forty  times. 
And  you  will  see  another  point  presently. 

Then  St.  Matthew's  Gospel  was  written 
especially  for  the  Jews.  It  again  and  again 
shows  them  how  Jesus  fulfilled  the  prophecies 
of  their  old  Sacred  Books.     Thus, — 

Chap.  i.  22.  "Now  all  this  was  done,  that  it 
might  be  fulfilled  which  was  spoken  of 
the  Lord  by  the  prophet." 
„  ii.  15.  *'That  it  might  be  fulfilled  which 
was  spoken  of  the  Lord  by  the  prophet." 
„  ii.  17.  "Then  was  fulfilled  that  which  was 
spoken  by  Jeremy  the  prophet." 


NEW  TESTAMENT   BOOKS    49 

Chap.  ii.  23.   "That  it  might   be  fulfilled  which 

was  spoken  by  the  prophets." 
,f      in.  3.  "  This  is  he  that  was  spoken  of  by 

the  prophet  Esaias." 
„      iv.  14.   "That  it  might  be  fulfilled  which 

was  spoken  by  Esaias  the  prophet." 
„      viii.  17.   "That  it  might  be  fulfilled  which 

was  spoken  by  Esaias  the  prophet." 
„      xii.  17.  "That  it  might  be  fulfilled  which 

was  spoken  by  Esaias  the  prophet." 
„      xiii.  1 4.   "  In  them  is  fulfilled  the  prophecy 

of  Esaias." 
„      xiii.  35.   "That  it  might  be  fulfilled  which 

was  spoken  by  the  prophet." 
„      xxi.  4.  "  That  it  might  be  fulfilled  which 

was  spoken  by  the  prophet." 
f,      xxvi.  56.    "  All    this    was   done,    that  the 

scriptures    of  the  prophets  might  be  ful- 
filled." 
„      xxvii.  9.  "Then  was   fulfilled  that  which 

was  spoken  by  Jeremy  the  prophet." 
„      xxvii.  35.  "  That  it  might  be  fulfilled  which 

was  spoken  by  the  prophet." 

But  let  us  look  at  the  Gospel  which  St. 
Luke  wrote.  He,  too,  wrote  for  Gentiles ; 
indeed,  first  of  all,  for  one  friend,  a  Greek 
named  Theophilus  (i.  3).  At  the  beginning 
of  his  book  he  tells  us  how  carefully  he  had 
collected  the  very  best  information.  He  says 
(R.V.)  that  he    had  "traced  the   course   of 

D 


50     THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

all  things  accurately  from  the  first."  Parts 
of  his  book  are  exactly  like  St.  Mark's,  and 
it  looks  as  if  he  used  what  Mark  had  written. 
Sometimes  he  puts  it  in  other  words,  for 
Luke  was  a  man  of  higher  education  and 
wrote  better  Greek ;  and  being  a  doctor, 
he  always  uses  medical  words  when  he  speaks 
of  diseases.  But  other  parts  of  his  book  are 
like  Matthew,  and  tell  what  Mark  does  not 
tell ;  so  we  think  that  both  Luke  and 
Matthew  took  things  from  another  book 
written  before,  which  has  not  been  kept. 
And  then  Luke  has  much  which  neither 
Matthew  nor  Mark  has,  which  he  got  from 
other  sources.  There  are  more  than  sixty 
incidents  or  discourses,  parables  or  miracles, 
in  his  Gospel  which  are  not  in  the  other 
Gospels.  Very  likely  when  he  was  in 
Palestine  with  St.  Paul  (Acts  xxi.  to  xxvi.) 
he  met  various  people  who  could  tell  him 
interesting  things  in  the  life  of  Christ.  Par- 
ticularly you  ought  to  look  at  his  first  two 
chapters  (from  verse  5  of  chap,  i.),  for  they 
tell  us  much  about  the  birth  and  infancy  of 
Jesus  which  is  in  no  other  Gospel.  Perhaps 
he  got  this  from  some  of  the  women  who 
knew  Mary  well ;  or  from  John,  who  took 


NEW  TESTAMENT  BOOKS     51 

care  of  Mary  after  Jesus  was  crucified  ;  or 
from  Mary  herself.  And  it  is  written  in 
language  different  from  the  elegant  Greek 
which  Luke  usually  wrote.  Perhaps  it  was 
first  written  down  by  some  very  simple 
Jew  or  Jewess  in  the  language  of  Palestine 
(Aramaic),  and  then  translated  into  Greek 
and  copied  by  Luke.  But  never  forget  that 
the  Holy  Spirit  was  guiding  him  all  the 
while,  that  he  might  write  what  was  one 
day  to  be  part  of  God's  great  Book  of  Holy 
Scriptures. 

Afterwards  St.  Luke  wrote  another  book, 
which  we  call  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles.  If 
you  look  at  the  first  \'erse,  you  will  see  that 
he  wrote  to  the  same  friend,  Theophilus, 
and  he  mentions  his  "  former  treatise."  In 
this  book  he  tells  us  what  happened  after 
the  Lord  Jesus  went  back  to  heaven  :  how 
the  Holy  Ghost  came  down ;  how  the 
Apostles  preached ;  how  the  Gentiles  were 
brought  into  the  Church  as  well  as  the  Jews 
— which  must  have  been  very  cheering  to 
the  converts  in  the  heathen  lands  ;  and  par- 
ticularly how  St.  Paul  travelled  from  country 
to  country,  Luke  himself  being  often  with 
him,  and  at  last  came  to  Rome.      How  do 


52     THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

we  know  that  Luke  was  often  with  St. 
Paul?  If  you  look  at  the  i6th  chapter, 
you  will  see  that  Luke  writes  "  we "  and 
"us,"  showing  that  he  and  Paul  were  to- 
gether; and  so  in  the  20th,  2 1st,  27th,  and 
28th  chapters.  Perhaps  Luke  meant  to  write 
a  third  volume,  and  if  he  had  we  should  have 
known  more  about  St.  Paul's  later  journeys, 
and  his  last  imprisonment  and  death ;  for 
in  Paul's  last  letter  (2  Tim.  iv.)  we  find  that 
Luke  was  with  him  at  the  end.  But  perhaps 
Luke  was  himself  also  put  to  death  by  the 
Roman  Emperor,  and  so  could  not  do  it. 
Certainly  we  have  got  all  that  God  intended 
us  to  have.     Let  us  be  thankful  for  that. 

It  is  not  likely  that  the  different  Churches 
very  soon  got  copies  of  all  the  three 
"  Gospels."  At  first  one  Church  would 
have  Mark,  and  another  Matthew,  and 
another  Luke  ;  but  we  may  be  sure  that 
copies  were  made  very  quickly  and  sent  all 
round.  But  very  few  of  those  early  Chris- 
tians ever  had  more  than  three.  They 
could  not  read  about  Nicodemus,  and  the 
Woman  of  Samaria,  and  the  Man  born 
Blind,  and  the  Raising  of  Lazarus  j  for 
none  of  these   are   mentioned    in  Matthew 


NEW  TESTAMENT  BOOKS     53 

or  Mark  or  Luke.  They  had  the  Blessed 
Comforter  with  them,  but  they  had  no 
book  telling  them  the  beautiful  words  in 
which  their  dear  Lord  had  promised  to 
send  the  Comforter.  But  by  and  by,  when 
many  of  them  were  dead — some  of  them 
killed  for  Christ's  sake, — and  when  their 
children  were  grown  up,  another  wonderful 
Book  came  out.  This  was  what  we  call 
the  Gospel  according  to  St.  John. 

St.  John  was  a  very  old  man  when  he 
wrote  it,  very  likely  ninety  or  more.  He 
had  lived  for  many  years  at  Ephesus,  long 
after  St.  Paul's  time  there.  He  had  been 
in  prison  in  the  little  rocky  island  of  Patmos 
— which  you  might  see  to-day  if  you  went 
in  a  steamer  to  Smyrna  and  Constantinople. 
In  Patmos  God  gave  him  those  wonderful 
visions  which  he  wrote  down  iu  the  book 
called  the  Apocalypse,  or  Revelation.  And 
now  all  the  other  Apostles  were  dead — ■ 
killed  for  Christ's  sake  ;  many  other  Chris- 
tians had  been  put  to  death  ;  Jerusalem  had 
been  destroyed  by  the  Romans,  as  Jesus 
had  said  (Luke  xix.  41-44 ;  xxi.  5,  6,  24) ; 
although  the  Church  was  growing  every- 
where, it  was  not  so  pure  in  doctrine,  for 


54     THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

errors   and    heresies    were   already  springing 
up.     The  aged  Apostle  wrote  a  solemn  and 
loving    letter    to    the     Churches    (ist    Ep. 
John),   in    which    he    warned    them   against 
these  errors  ;  and  he  also  wrote  his  wonder- 
ful "  Gospel,"  the  most  beautiful  of  all  the 
Books   which   we    have    in    our    Bible.     It 
told    the    Christians   a    great    deal    that  was 
new  to  most  of  them  about  the  Lord  Jesus 
and    His    teaching.     They    found    that    He 
was  the  Word  of  God   (chap,   i.),  and  the 
Bread  of  Life  (chap,  vi.),  and  the  Light  of 
the  World  (chap,  viii.),  and  the  Good  Shep- 
herd  (chap.  X.),  and   the  True  Vine  (chap. 
XV.) ;  they  read  His  conversations  with  Nico- 
demus  (chap,  iii.),  and  the  Woman  of  Samaria 
(chap,  iv.),  and  many  discourses  at  Jerusalem 
(chaps,    v.,    vii.,    viii.,    x.,    xii.),    and    those 
beautiful    farewell    words    to    His    disciples 
the  night  before   He  died  (chaps,  xiv.,  xv., 
xvi.),    and    much    more    besides.     When    a 
copy    of   this    Gospel    was    taken    to    some 
distant  city,   how    keen    the   converts  there 
would   be    to    hear  what    had   been  written 
by    old    John,    the    last    of    the    Apostles, 
whom    they    had    never   seen  !     No   doubt, 
by   and   by,   copies    came    over   to   Britain, 


NEW  TESTAMENT  BOOKS     55 

and  were  read  by  the  British  Christians  at 
London  and  Winchester  and  York  ! 

All  these  New  Testament  Books  were 
written  in  Greek,  that  wonderful  language 
which,  as  I  said  before,  God  had  ordained 
to  be  understood  at  that  time  by  many 
nations  in  many  lands.  There  are,  how- 
ever, here  and  there,  a  few  words  borrowed 
from  other  languages.  For  instance,  we 
sometimes  find  the  very  Aramaic  words 
which  Jesus  actually  spoke,  such  as  Talitha 
cumiy  and  Ephphatha^  and  Eloi  lama  sabach- 
thani,  which  St.  Mark,  who  gives  us  most 
of  these,  "  interprets  "  or  translates  for  his 
readers  (see  Mark  v.  41,  vii.  34,  xv.  34). 
St.  Mark  also  uses  more  Latin  words  than 
the  others,  which  is  one  reason  why  we 
think  he  wrote  for  the  Romans  ;  thus  he 
calls  the  executioner  who  beheaded  John 
the  Baptist,  and  the  centurion  who  crucified 
Jesus,  by  Latin  words  (vi.  27,  xv.  39). 

The  Four  Gospels,  and  the  Acts,  and  the 
Revelation,  used  to  be  read  in  the  Churches, 
just  as  I  said  the  Epistles  were  ;  and  gradually 
the  Christians  came  to  see  that  these  were 
really  "  Scriptures,"  books  that  should  be  added 
to  the  old  Jewish  Scriptures  as  parts  of  God's 


56     THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

inspired  Word.  The  earliest  case  of  this  being 
understood  we  find  in  one  of  the  inspired 
Letters  themselves,  in  the  2nd  Epistle  of 
Peter  (iii.  15,  16),  where  St.  Paul's  Epistles 
are  called  "  Scriptures."  ^  Afterwards  we  find 
the  good  and  learned  men  who  lived  after  the 
Apostles  quoting  in  their  writings  a  host  of 
passages  from  the  Gospels  and  Epistles  as 
having  the  authority  of  inspired  Scriptures. 
There  was  Clement,  who  was  an  early 
Bishop  of  Rome,  and  wrote  an  Epistle  to  the 
Church  of  Corinth,  which  we  still  have ; 
there  were  Ignatius,  Bishop  of  Antioch,  and 
Polycarp,  Bishop  of  Smyrna,  and  Justin,  a 
Greek  who  was  martyred  at  Rome,  and 
Irenaeus  of  Lyons  (the  city  which  we  now 
know  in  France),  and  Origen  of  Alexandria, 
and  a  great  many  others.^  It  is  Justin,  in  the 
2nd  century,  who  tells  us  of  the  accounts  of 

^  The  word  "  Scriptures  "  occurs  fifty  times  in  the 
New  Testament,  and  everywhere  else  means  the 
canonical  Books  of  the  Old  Testament ;  so  it  is 
indisputable  that  2  Peter  iii.  16  intends  to  place 
St.  Paul's  Epistles  alongside  them.  This,  however, 
is  one  of  the  arguments  used  for  a  late  date  for  2nd 
Peter. 

2  There  are  conveniently  arranged  lists  of  the 
Fathers  and  their  quotations  from  the  Gospels  and 


NEW  TESTAMENT  BOOKS     57 

our  Lord''s  life  on  earth  being  called  "  Gospels." 
These  good  men  were  not  all  quite  sure 
which  of  the  beautiful  writings  they  had  were 
really  inspired  "Scriptures."  Some  of  them 
wrote  lists,  and  these  lists  are  not  all  alike. 
The  Gospels  and  the  Acts  and  most  of  St. 
Paul's  Epistles  were  quickly  recognized,  but 
there  were  doubts  for  a  long  time  about  some 
of  the  others.  Moreover,  there  were  other 
writings  which  some  thought  might  also  be 
"  Scriptures  "  ;  for  instance,  Clement's  Epistle 
which  I  mentioned  just  now,  and  a  book  by 
Hermas  called  "  The  Shepherd."  And  it 
was  more  than  three  hundred  years  before  the 
Canon  of  the  New  Testament,  like  the  Canon 
of  the  Old  Testament  which  I  told  you  of 
in  the  last  chapter,  was  finally  settled.  But 
we  are  quite  sure  now  that  the  Holy  Spirit 
guided  the  Church  to  choose  rightly  which 
books  to  put  into  the  Canon  and  which  to 
leave  out ;  and  there  has  been  no  dispute  for 
more  than  fifteen  centuries  that  our  New 
Testament  is  a  true  part  of  God's  great  Book 
of  Scriptures. 

Epistles  in  Green's  Revised  Edition  of  Angus's 
Bible  Handbook,  and  of  course  a  fuller  account  in 
Westcott's  New  Testament  Canon. 


CHAPTER  V 

ABOUT    THE    NEW    TESTAMENT:    THE 
MANUSCRIPTS    AND    VERSIONS 

In  our  third  chapter,  I  told  you  about  the 
way  in  which  the  Books  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment were  copied,  and  copied  again,  and 
copied  again,  by  the  Jewish  Scribes  ;  and  that 
we  have  some  copies  about  900  years  old. 
Also  about  the  Hebrew  language  in  which 
they  were  written,  and  the  Aramaic  language 
afterwards  used,  and  the  Greek  Version  called 
the  Septuagint.  Let  us  now  see  how  the 
Books  of  the  New  Testament,  which  were 
all  written  in  Greek,  have  come  down  to  us. 
Suppose  we  were  to  hear  one  day  that  St. 
John's  Gospel,  in  his  own  hand-writing,  the 
actual  rolls  of  skin  or  paper  on  which  he  wrote 
it,  had  been  found  in  some  cave  near  Ephesus  ; 
and  suppose  we  heard  that  it  was  being 
brought  to  England  to  be  put  in  the  British 

Museum  ;  what  a  rush  there  would  be  to  see 

s8 


THE  NEW  TESTAMENT       59 

it  !  Such  a  thing  is  very  unlikely  1  So  far 
as  we  know,  there  is  not  in  the  world  even  a 
single  copy  made  straight  from  his  own  writ- 
ing. When  the  Roman  Emperors  persecuted 
the  Christians,  they  ordered  all  Christian 
books  to  be  destroyed  ;  and  it  was  not  easy 
to  save  any.  I  do  not  think  any  of  the  rolls 
of  the  Apostles'  own  writing  were  saved. 
Do  you  ask  why  God  did  not  preserve  them 
somehow  ?  Of  course  we  do  not  know  all 
God's  purposes  :  but  I  am  sure  that  if  they 
had  been  preserved,  foolish  people  would  al- 
most have  worshipped  them,  and  would  have 
thought  they  had  power  to  heal  sick  people, 
like  the  "relics  of  saints"  which  you  may 
now  see  in  many  churches  in  France  and 
Italy  and  Spain. 

Of  the  copies  made  before  the  great  per- 
secution under  the  Emperor  Diocletian  (a.d. 
303)  a  few  little  fragments  have  been  lately 
found  in  Egypt.  A  leaf  of  papyrus  (the 
paper  I  mentioned  in  our  first  chapter)  is 
now  in  the  British  Museum,  which  has  on 
it  some  verses  from  St.  John's  Gospel.  But 
when,  a  few  years  later,  the  Emperor  Con- 
stantine  established  Christianity  in  the  Roman 
Empire,  men  began  to  write  copies  on  vellum, 


6o     THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

which  is  made  of  calf-skin,  fine  and  strong  ; 
and  these  were  more  easily  kept  than  the 
papyrus  rolls.  They  were  not  rolls  at  all, 
but  made  more  like  our  books.  Sometimes 
people  wrote  on  little  wooden  tablets,  as 
Zacharias  did  when  he  named  his  son  John 
(see  Luke  i.  63,  where  the  R.V.  changes 
"  table  "  into  "  tablet ").  Such  a  tablet  was 
called  a  codex ^  and  as  the  leaves  of  vellum  were 
square,  and  strung  together  on  a  cord,  like 
the  tablets,  a  book  written  on  vellum  came  to 
be  called  a  codex  too.  And  of  these  codices 
we  have  a  great  many.  We  usually  call 
them  Manuscripts,  a  Latin  word  which  means 
"written  by  hand,"  as  of  course  they  all 
were.  For  short,  we  write  MS.  for  one,  or 
MSS.  for  more  than  one. 

Of  these  Manuscripts  there  are  two  kinds. 
The  older  of  them,  written  all  in  large  capital 
Greek  letters,  are  called  "Uncial  Manu- 
scripts,'"* from  a  Latin  word  applied  to  large 
letters  in  writing.^  Of  these  there  are  more 
than   a    hundred,    in    different    Libraries   in 

1  Unda=" mch.^^ ',  also  "ounce,"  which  word 
is  derived  from  it.  '''' Liter <z  unciales^^  means 
"letters  an  inch  big."  This  use  of  the  word  is 
derived  from  St.  Jerome. 


THE  NEW  TESTAMENT       6i 

Europe,  but  most  of  them  contain  only  por- 
tions of  the  New  Testament.  The  later 
ones,  written  also  in  Greek,  but  in  what  we 
call  a  running  hand  like  our  letter-writing, 
are  called  "  Cursive  Manuscripts,"  from  a 
Latin  word  which  means  running.^  Of 
them  there  are  some  two  thousand,  and  most 
ot  these  also  are  only  fragments.  Of  course 
the  oldest  are  the  most  valuable,  because 
every  time  a  copy  is  made  from  an  older 
copy,  there  is  more  risk  of  mistakes.  Learned 
men  can  generally  tell  by  the  kind  of  writing 
about  what  time  a  manuscript  was  written  j 
and  we  know  that  the  oldest  Uncial  MSS.  that 
we  still  have  were  written  about  the  fourth 
century  after  Christ,  and  the  oldest  Cursive 
MSS.  about  the  ninth  century  after  Christ. 

Now  there  are  three  Uncial  MSS.  which  are 
older  and  more  important  than  all  the  rest. 

I.  The  Sinaitic  MS.  This  is  the  most 
valuable  of  all.  Seventy  years  ago  it  had 
never  been  heard  of.  Part  of  it  was  dis- 
covered in  1844  in  a  convent  at  Mount 
Sinai,  by  a  learned  German,  Dr.  Tischendorf. 
He  found  it  quite  accidentally,  in  a  basket 
of  old  papers  which  the  monks  were  going 
^  Curro  =  "  I  run." 


62     THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

to  use  to  light  the  fires  with  !  Fifteen  years 
later  he  managed  to  get  the  rest  of  it ;  and 
it  now  belongs  to  the  Emperor  of  Russia, 
and  is  kept  in  the  Library  at  St.  Petersburg. 
It  contains  the  Septuagint  Version  of  the 
Old  Testament,  and  the  whole  New  Testa- 
ment ;  and  also  two  other  early  Christian 
writings,  which  shows  that  it  was  made  be- 
fore the  Church  had  finally  settled  the  Canon 
— of  which  I  told  you  in  the  last  chapter. 
Here  is  a  copy  of  a  bit  of  the  Sinaitic  MS. 
The  verse  given  is  Heb.  xii.  27  : — 

TO&.e  GTI  Stl  KX^H>rt 

THNTCDNCXKey 
OM  €  M  CD  NTJ  eTKOc 

ciHCDcnenoiH 

MeNOJNIWxHim 
TKM  H  CKKCyO  M  €  NK 
Al  O g XCI\€ I XN XCA 

2.  The  Vatican  MS.  This  belongs  to 
the  Pope,  and  has  been  in  the  Vatican 
Library  at  Rome  for  hundreds  of  years.  It 
is  believed  to  be  even  a  little  older  than  the 
Sinaitic  MS.,  but  it  is  not  quite  complete. 


THE  NEW  TESTAMENT       63 

some  leaves  having  been  lost  from  both  the 
Old  and  the  New  Testaments.  It  has,  how- 
ever, no  other  book  in  it,  as  the  Sinaitic  has. 

3.  The  Alexandrian  MS.  This  was  given 
to  King  Charles  I.  by  the  Greek  Patriarch 
of  Constantinople  in  1627,  ^'^^  ^^  ^^^  ^^  ^^^ 
British  Museum.  It  was  probably  written 
a  hundred  years  later  than  the  other  two, 
but  it  is  very  valuable  in  many  ways.  It  is 
not  quite  complete,  some  leaves  being  missing. 
It  has  at  the  end  the  Epistle  of  Clement, 
which  I  mentioned  in  the  last  chapter. 
Here  is  a  bit  of  the  Alexandrian  MS.  :  the 
first  five  verses  of  St.  John's  Gospel : — 


MApX^MHNOAOrOCKAIOAonJCH 

•nj»oCTONeT*'i<AiecMMOAoroc  • 
oy-roCHMeMAPKKnpocTONeN 
TTXMTi^A.  I  xvrov€rer4  6Toi  <MXuj' 
re  tc  xYXOve  re  mgtoo  v^^^ee  m 
O  r  e  p  o  M  6  rsi  e  M  AVfcu  5:  cu  i-i  M  tsj  __ 

|<A  iTOcbcucet^Tri  C  fCOxa  *.<+>  Al 
Me  I  KAIHCJCOTIAAVTOOVlvAXe 

Learned    men,   to   save    time   and    space, 


64     THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

usually  speak  and  write  of  the  principal 
Uncial  MSS.  by  letters  of  our  alphabet. 
The  Alexandrian  MS.  is  called  "A,"  and 
the  Vatican  MS.  "B,"  and  there  are  other 
important  MSS.  called  **  C,"  « D,"  «E," 
and  so  on.  When  the  Sinaitic  MS.  was 
discovered,  there  was  no  letter  for  it,  so 
they  agreed  to  name  it  by  the  first  letter  of 
the  Hebrew  alphabet,  "Aleph,"  which  is 
written  J<.  So  if  ever  you  see  in  some  book 
about  the  Bible  "  Codex  i^"  you  will  know  the 
Sinaitic  MS.  is  meant ;  and  if  you  see  "  Codex 
B,"  you  will  know  it  is  the  Vatican  MS. 

Some  of  the  MSS.  are  in  a  very  curious 
condition.  The  parchment  in  these  cases 
has  been  written  on  twice.  Somebody  has 
tried  to  rub  out  the  first  writing,  and  write 
again  on  the  top  of  it.  A  MS.  like  this  is 
called  a  palimpsest.  There  is  one  old  and 
important  MS.  of  parts  of  the  Septuagint 
and  New  Testament,  over  which  has  been 
written  a  copy  of  writings  by  a  Syrian  named 
Ephraem.  But  it  was  rubbed  over  by  some 
chemical  seventy  years  ago,  and  now  the 
original  Scriptures  can  be  read  underneath.^ 

1  The  important  palimpsest  fragment  known  as 
Codex  Zacynthius  is  exhibited  in  one  of  the  show- 
cases in  the  Bible  House  Library. 


THE  NEW  TESTAMENT       65 

You  would  find  it  difficult  to  read  these 
manuscripts,  even  those  of  you  who  know 
Greek.  For,  first,  the  words  are  not  sepa- 
rated, but  run  into  one  another.  Suppose 
we  printed  the  English  New  Testament 
that  way,  then  the  first  verse  of  the  6th 
chapter  of  St.  Matthew  would  look  like  this, 

TAKEHEEDTHATYEDONOTYOUR,  &C.      Secondly, 

abbreviations  are  used  in  the  case  of  names 
that  occur  frequently,  as  God  and  Jesus, 
which  (in  English)  would  be  written  GD 
and  JS  ;  and  also  by  cutting  off  M  or  N 
at  the  end  of  a  word,  as  if  (in  English)  we 
wrote  KiNGDO  and  natio  for  "  kingdom " 
and  "  nation."  Thirdly,  the  letters  are  some- 
times made  smaller  at  the  end  of  a  line,  to 
get  them  in,  as  if  we  wrote  JUDGENOT- 
THATYEBENOTJUdged.  Fourthly, 

sometimes  the  word  at  the  end  of  a  line  is 
curiously  divided,  and  the  rest  of  it  put  in  the 
next  line  (which  we  also  do  in  some  cases, 
with  a  hyphen),  thus, 

ANDSEEINGTHEMU 
LTITUDESHEWENTUP 

So  it  has  cost  learned  men  much  labour  to 
make  out  the  MSS.  ;  but  all  the  principal 
ones  are  now  well-known. 

E 


66     THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

You  will  understand  that  in  copying 
manuscripts  it  is  very  easy  to  make  mistakes, 
so  that  we  might  expect  that  the  copies 
we  have  would  differ  a  good  deal  from  one 
another,  and  it  would  be  difficult  for  us  to 
know  which  was  correct.  But  the  copyists 
were  so  careful  that  although  the  differences 
are  many,  most  of  them  are  not  at  all  im- 
portant. When  we  find  the  three  great 
MSS.  which  I  have  mentioned  agreeing  to- 
gether, we  may  be  pretty  sure  that  they  are 
right,  and  we  need  not  take  any  notice  of 
differences  in  the  other  MSS.  And  again, 
v/hen  the  two  we  call  Codex  ^^  and  Codex 
B  agree,  that  is  the  Sinaitic  and  the  Vatican, 
it  is  most  likely  that  they  are  right ;  though 
if  Codex  A  (the  Alexandrian)  differs  from 
them,  the  question  has  to  be  very  carefully 
considered.  It  is  very  wonderful  that  we 
should  be  able  to  be  quite  sure  that  we 
have  in  almost  every  case  the  very  words 
which  the  Apostles  wrote.  It  shows  how 
the  providence  of  God  has  preserved  His 
Word  ;  and  we  may  be  confident  that  He 
had  a  wise  purpose  in  letting  us  be  uncertain 
in  a  few  passages. 

You  will  generally  find  that  our  Revised 


THE  NEW  TESTAMENT       67 

Version  is  more  correct  than  the  older  Bible 
which  we  call  the  Authorized  Version. 
Why  this  is  so  we  shall  see  by  and  by  in 
another  chapter.  Let  me  tell  you  two  cases. 
In  the  fifth  chapter  of  the  First  Epistle 
of  St.  John  you  will  find  in  the  Authorized 
Version  these  words,  "There  are  three  that 
bear  record  in  heaven,  the  Father,  the  Word, 
and  the  Holy  Ghost,  and  these  three  are 
one."  The  Revised  Version  leaves  this  sen- 
tence out.  It  is  not  in  any  of  the  earliest 
MSS.,  and  we  may  be  sure  that  it  was  not 
in  the  Epistle  as  St.  John  wrote  it.  Very 
likely,  some  good  man  wrote  it  as  a  note  of 
his  own  in  the  margin  of  his  copy  (as  people 
sometimes  do  in  their  Bibles  now)  ;  and 
some  other  good  man,  making  another  copy 
from  that  one,  supposed  that  the  words  had 
been  accidentally  left  out,  and  that  the  good 
man  who  wrote  them  in  the  margin  put 
them  there  to  make  his  copy  correct ;  so 
then  the  second  good  man  put  into  his  new 
copy  what  he  believed  ought  to  have  been 
in  the  other  one.  And  then  other  men 
who  afterwards  copied  from  the  new  one 
naturally  kept  the  words  in.  Of  course  the 
words  themselves  say  what  is  true.     There 


68     THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

are  Three  in  Heaven,  and  these  Three  are 
One ;  and  this  doctrine  of  the  Trinity  is 
plainly  taught  in  the  New  Testament.  But 
although  the  words  are  true,  they  have  no 
business  in  St.  John's  Epistle  if  he  did  not 
write  them.  How  they  came  into  our  Bible 
you  will  hear  in  another  chapter. 

Another  case  is  the  Angel's  Song  on  the 
night  of  the  Birth  of  Jesus.  We  know 
so  well  the  words  as  they  stand  in  our 
Authorized  Version  :  "  Glory  to  God  in  the 
highest,  and  on  earth  peace,  goodwill  to- 
wards men."  But  the  last  four  words  are 
different  in  the  three  great  MSS.  The 
Greek  words  in  those  MSS.  mean  "  among 
men  of  goodwill."  How  comes  this  differ- 
ence ?  It  is  very  curious.  It  only  depends 
upon  whether  there  is  a  certain  letter  s  in, 
or  not.  The  Greek  word  for  "  good  will " 
is  eudokia.  In  those  three  MSS.  the  word 
is,  eudokias^  which  is  the  genitive  case,  and 
means  "  (j/' goodwill "  or  "  of  good  pleasure  "  ; 
and  to  get  the  sense  right,  the  Revised 
Version  has  "among  men  in  whom  he  is 
well  pleased."  But  if  you  look  in  the  R.V. 
margin,  you  will  find  these  words  :  "  Many 
ancient     manuscripts     read,     good     pleasure 


THE  NEW  TESTAMENT       69 

among  men  "  ;  because  there  are  many  that 
have  eudokia  without  the  5,  though  not  the 
three  great  ones.  And  the  R.V.  generally 
tells  m  the  margin  when  there  are  differences 
like  this.i 

All  these  manuscript  copies  of  which  I 
have  been  speaking  are  of  course  in  Greek. 
But  there  are  many  other  manuscript  copies 
of  Versions  in  other  languages.  For  transla- 
tions began  to  be  made  of  the  Gospels  and 
Epistles  in  very  early  times.  For  example, 
there  were  great  numbers  of  Christians  in 
Syria  and  neighbouring  lands  who  did  not 
know  Greek,  and  for  their  use  a  Version  was 
made  in  the  2nd  century  in  the  Syriac 
language  which  they  spoke.  At  the  same 
time,  a  Syriac  Version  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment was  also  made.  This  Syriac  Bible 
came  to  be  called  the  PeshittOy  which  means 
the  "  simple  "  or  "  correct  "  Version.  It  had 
a  wonderful  career,  for  it  seems  to  have  been 
read  almost  all  over  Asia  I  One  of  the 
Churches  of  the  East,  called  the  Nestorian, 
gradually  sent    missionaries    into  Persia   and 

Mn  I  John  v.^  the  R.V.  margin  has  no  entry 
regarding-  the  "three  in  heaven,"  because  the 
words  omitted  are  not  in  any  of  the  oldest  MSS. 


70     THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

India  and  even  to  China  ;  and  there  is  in 
China  to-day  a  very  old  slab  of  stone  with 
a  long  inscription  engraven  on  it,  which 
has  both  Chinese  and  Syriac  characters,  and 
which  tells  how  the  Christian  Religion  had 
spread  in  China.  The  valuable  MS.  of  that 
same  Syriac  Bible  which  is  now  at  Cambridge 
actually  came  from  India,  where  it  was  given 
to  Dr.  Claudius  Buchanan  by  the  Bishop  of 
the  Christian  Church  in  South  India  which 
has  existed  for  hundreds  of  years  as  the 
fruit  of  those  ancient  Missions.  Here  is  a 
specimen  of  the  ancient  Syriac  writing.  It 
is  St.  John  iii.  i6  : — 

iU^  oL  tpoou  PI   .  jdIj   11   oiQ 

Then  in  North  Africa,  also,  the  Christians 
generally  did  not  know  Greek,  but  spoke 
Latin,  the  language  of  Rome  ;  and  a  Latin 
Version  was  made  for  them.  Other  Versions 
were  made  in  the  Armenian,  Ethiopian,  and 
Coptic  languages,  in  the  next  tv/o  or  three 


THE  NEW  TESTAMENT       71 

centuries  ;  and  one  was  made  for  the  Goths 
who  invaded  the  Roman  Empire,  by  a  famous 
Bishop  named  Ulphilas.  There  is  a  very 
valuable  MS.  of  portions  of  this  Gothic 
Version  at  Upsala  in  Sweden,  with  the 
characters  inscribed  in  silver  on  mulberry- 
tinted  vellum.  It  is  called  Codex  Argenteus, 
the  Silver  Book. 

But  the  most  interesting  and  important  of 
all  these  Versions  was  made  by  the  learned 
monk,  Saint  Jerome.  The  Latin  Version  of 
the  New  Testament  made  in  North  Africa 
was  very  imperfect,  and  Jerome  revised  it ; 
and  he  also  made  a  new  Latin  Version  of  the 
Hebrew  Old  Testament.  He  took  twenty- 
one  years  to  do  it,  toiling  away  in  his  cell  at 
Bethlehem ;  and  it  was  completed  in  a.d. 
405.  Jerome  was  the  greatest  scholar  of 
those  days,  and  one  would  think  that  all 
the  Christians  who  usually  spoke  Latin — of 
whom  there  were  by  that  time  hundreds 
of  thousands  in  Italy  and  Spain  and  Gaul 
(France)  and  North  Africa  —  would  have 
eagerly  welcomed  his  great  work.  But  they 
did  not ;  they  liked  the  old  imperfect  Version 
they  were  used  to  better  ;  and  they  thought 
a  new   Version    was  dangerous,  and   would 


72     THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

lead  people  astray.  However,  in  about  a 
hundred  years  ft  became  the  one  great  Bible 
of  Western  Europe,  and  remained  so  for  a 
thousand  years,  until  the  Reformation.  It 
came  to  be  called  Fersio  Vulgata^  the  "  com- 
monly received  Version,"  from  vulgus,  a  Latin 
word  signifying  the  common  people.  So  we 
usually  call  it  "  the  Vulgate."  There  are  a 
great  many  manuscript  copies  of  this  Version, 
and  it  is  interesting  that  the  most  important 
of  them,  which  is  now  at  Florence,  is  said 
to  have  been  written  in  England,  in  North- 
umberland, about  the  end  of  the  7th  cen- 
tury. We  shall  hear  more  about  the  Vulgate 
in  future  chapters. 


CHAPTER   VI 

ABOUT    EARLY    ENGLISH    VERSIONS 

In  our  last  chapter  we  saw  that  an  important 
manuscript  of  Saint  Jerome's  great  Latin 
Version  of  the  Scriptures,  which  we  call 
the  Vulgate,  was  written  in  Northumber- 
land, towards  the  end  of  the  7th  century. 
No  doubt  there  were  copies  in  the  British 
Isles  long  before  that.  Although  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  invaders  in  the  5th  and  6th  centuries 
had  almost  destroyed  the  ancient  British 
Church,  the  Church  of  Ireland  which  Saint 
Patrick  had  founded  was  flourishing.  It  is 
said  that  there  were  Versions  of  portions  of 
Scripture  in  Erse,  the  old  Irish  language, 
which  is  very  likely,  for  Ireland  was  then 
known  as  the  Island  of  Saints,  and  students 
from  other  countries  fled    thither  from   the 

turmoil  and   bloodshed  of  the  Continent  of 

73 


74     THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

Europe,  calling  Armagh  the  University  of  the 
West.  From  Ireland  went  Saint  Columba 
and  other  missionaries  to  Scotland.  From 
the  island  of  lona,  which  became  their  head- 
quarters, went  Saint  Aidan  to  Northumbria 
(as  it  was  then  called).  At  Armagh,  and  at 
lona,  and  at  Lindisfarne  off  the  Northum- 
brian coast,  and  at  Jarrow  on  the  Tyne,  and 
at  Whitby  in  Yorkshire,  and  at  Bangor  in 
Wales,  there  were  monasteries  with  libraries, 
where  the  monks  had  Latin  writings  which 
they  could  read.  And  when  Saint  Augustine 
came  from  Rome  to  preach  the  Gospel  to 
the  Saxons  of  the  south,  and  became  the 
first  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  a  monastery 
was  established  at  that  city,  and  there  also 
would  no  doubt  be  found  Jerome's  Latin 
Version. 

But  there  was  no  Bible  for  the  people 
in  their  own  tongue  ;  and  if  there  had  been 
one,  they  could  not  have  read  it.  Even 
kings  and  princes  did  not  always  learn  to 
read  in  those  davs.  Then  arose  the  first 
English  poet,  Casdmon,  a  monk  at  Whitby, 
who  put  the  Bible  histories  into  Anglo-Saxon 
verse  ;  and  his  verses,  learned  by  heart  and 
constantly  repeated,  taught  the  people  a  good 


EARLY  ENGLISH  VERSIONS     75 

deal.  Here  are  a  few  of  his  lines,  with  a 
modern  English  translation  : — 

Ece  dryhten  The  eternal  Lord 

ovrd  onstealde.  formed  the  beginning. 

He  aerest  ge-sceop  He  first  created 

ylda  bearnum  for  the  children  of  men 

heofon  to  hrofe,  heaven  as  a  roof, 

halig  scyppend  !  the  holy  Creator  ! 

This  was  towards  the  end  of  the  7th  century. 
About  the  same  time,  good  men  here  and 
there  were  beginning  to  translate  portions 
of  Scripture  from  Jerome's  Latin  into  the 
language  of  the  people.  One  Anglo-Saxon 
Version  of  the  Four  Gospels  had  a  remark- 
able history.  It  was  written  by  Eadfrith, 
a  monk  who  afterwards  became  Bishop  of 
Lindisfarne.  In  King  Alfred's  time  the 
Danes  attacked  and  plundered  the  monastery, 
but  the  monks  who  escaped  took  this  MS.  in 
its  silver-gilt  cover  with  them.  While  they 
were  trying  unsuccessfully  to  sail  over  to 
Ireland,  it  fell  into  the  sea,  to  their  great 
grief ;  but  some  days  afterwards  they  actually 
found  it,  washed  up  on  the  Solway  sands. 
Eventually  it  was  stored  at  Durham,  but 
when  after  several  centuries  the  valuable 
collection     of    Sir    R.    Cotton,    the     great 


76     THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

antiquary,  became  national  property,  this  old 
MS.  was  found  in  it.  In  1731,  a  fire  de- 
stroyed many  of  the  Cotton  MSS.,  but  this 
one  was  saved,  and  it  is  now  in  the  British 
Museum.  It  is  written  with  such  good 
ink  that,  after  the  lapse  of  centuries,  the 
writing  is  as  black  and  clear  as  ever  ;  and 
it  is  adorned  with  beautiful  illustrations. 
Dr.  Hodgkin,  who  records  this  strange 
history,  quotes  the  66th  Psalm,  "  We  went 
through  fiire  and  through  water,  but  Thou 
broughtest  us  out  into  a  wealthy  place." 

An  old  monk  at  Jarrow,  whom  we  call  the 
Venerable  Bede,  made  further  translations. 
He  was  a  very  learned  man,  and  had  many 
pupils  from  all  parts.  He  wrote  the  Church 
History  of  England  up  to  that  time  ;  and 
almost  all  we  know  of  it  we  get  from  him. 
He  was  finishing  his  translation  of  St.  John's 
Gospel  as  he  lay  dying,  and  wished  much  to 
complete  it.  It  was  Ascension  Day,  May 
26th,  735.  "Take  up  thy  pen  and  write 
quickly,"  he  said  to  his  scribe ;  and  he 
dictated  the  last  chapter  of  the  Gospel.  At 
length,  as  his  strength   ebbed  away  and  his 

^  In  The  Bible  in  the  Worlds  May  1906. 


EARLY  ENGLISH  VERSIONS     77 

voice  failed,  the  writer  said,  "  Only  one 
verse  more  !  "  The  old  man  gave  the  trans- 
lation, and  gasped,  "  It  is  finished  !  Glory 
be  to  the  Father,  and  to  the  Son,  and  to  the 
Holy  Ghost !  " — and  his  spirit  passed  away. 
It  is  his  pupil  Cuthbert,  afterwards  Bishop 
of  Lindisfarne,  who  tells  us  this. 

Then  came  King  Alfred,  who  wished  all 
his  people  to  be  able  to  read  English.  He 
too  translated  some  portions  of  Scripture, 
and  put  the  Ten  Commandments  at  the 
head  of  his  code  of  laws.  Here  is  the 
Sixth — Ne  ska  thu^  "  Slay  not  thou  "  ;  and, 
the  Eighth — Ne  stala  thu^  "  Steal  not  thou." 
Other  good  men  followed  ;  among  them  a 
monk  named  Orme,  who  put  the  Gospels 
into  verse,  and  said,  "/r^  hafe  wenned  inn- 
till  Ennglissh  Goddspelless  halighe  lore  " — "  I 
have  turned  into  English  the  Gospel's  holy 
lore." 

At  last,  in  the  reign  of  Edward  III., 
arose  the  first  man  to  give  the  English 
people  the  whole  Bible — John  WyclifFe. 
He  was  Master  of  Balliol  College,  Oxford, 
and  the  most  famous  scholar  in  the  Uni- 
versity J  and  afterwards  Rector  of  Lutter- 
worth in   Leicestershire.     At   that  time  the 


78     THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

Church  in  England  was  very  corrupt. 
Bishops  and  clergy  and  monks  lived  in 
luxury,  and  did  little  for  the  people.  Even 
the  friars  of  the  Franciscan  Order,  estab- 
lished by  Saint  Francis  of  Assisi,  vv^ho  had 
at  first  been  earnest  and  self-denying  mission- 
aries, w^ere  novv^  no  better  than  the  rest. 
WyclifFe  spoke  and  wrote  strongly  against 
these  disorders,  and  also  against  the  efforts 
of  the  Pope  of  Rome  to  direct  all  the 
affairs  of  the  English  Church.  But  his 
great  work  was  his  English  Bible,  trans- 
lated from  Jerome's  Latin  Version  by  him- 
self and  another  learned  man,  and  completed 
in  1380.  A  revised  edition  was  brought  out 
by  a  third  scholar  a  few  years  later.i 

WyclifFe's  Bible  shows  us  what  sort  of 
English  was  spoken  in  the  Middle  Ages. 
It  looks  very  different,  because  our  spelling 
has  changed  so  much  ;  but  if  you  heard  it 
read  aloud  you  would   not  notice  the  spell- 

^  This,  of  course,  is  merely  a  compendious  state- 
ment. It  would  not  be  consistent  with  the  simple 
plan  of  the  book  to  give  the  details,  WycHfte 
translating  the  N.T.,  Herford  the  greater  part  of 
the  O.T.,  and  Purvey  revising  both  a  few  years 
later.  It  is  this  revision  that  is  commonly  known 
as  Wycliffe's  Bible, 


EARLY  ENGLISH  VERSIONS     79 

ing,  and  you  would  understand  a  great  deal 
of  it.  Here  is  the  beginning  of  the  2nd 
chapter  of  St.  Matthew  : — 

"Therefore  whanne  Jhesus  was  borun  in  Beth- 
leem  of  Juda,  in  the  dayes  of  King  Eroude :  lo, 
astronomyens  camen  fro  the  eest  to  Jerusalem,  and 
seiden,  Where  is  he  that  is  borun  King  of  Jewis  ? 
for  we  han  seen  his  steere  in  the  eest,  and  we  are 
comen  for  to  worschipe  hym." 

But  there  are  many  words  which  have 
changed  their  meaning  in  the  past  five 
hundred  years,  and  these  would  have  to  be 
explained.  For  example,  when  the  Apostles 
(in  Acts  iv.)  are  called  "  unlearned  men," 
Wycliffe  puts  "  idiots "  ;  but  he  does  not 
mean  idiot  in  our  sense  of  the  word.  His 
23rd  Psalm  begins,  "  The  Lord  gouerneth 
me,  and  no  thing  to  me  shal  lacke "  ;  and 
by  "  gouerneth  "  he  means  "  guide  and  tend 
like  a  shepherd."  Here  is  the  8th  Psalm 
in  WyclifFe's  Bible  :— 

PSALM   VIII 

Lord  oure  Lord ;  hou  myche  merueilous  is  thi 
name  in  al  the  erthe 

For  rerid  vp  is  thi  grete  doing  ouer  heuenes. 
Of  the  mouth  of  vnspekende  childer   ^nd  sou- 


8o     THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

kende  thou  performedist  preising,  for  thin  enemys ; 
that  thou  destroze  the  enemy  and  the  veniere. 

For  I  shall  see  thin  heuenes,  the  werkis  of  thi 
fingris  ;  the  mone  and  the  sterris,  that  thou  hast 
foundid. 

What  is  a  man,  that  myndeful  thou  art  of  hym ; 
or  the  son  of  man,  for  thou  visitist  hym  ? 

Thou  lassedest  hym  a  litii  lasse  fro  aungelis; 
with  glorie  and  worshipe  thou  crounedest  hym,  and 
settist  hym  ouer  the  werkis  of  thin  hondys. 

Alle  thingus  thou  leidist  vnder  his  feet, 

Shep  and  oxen  alle  ;  ferthermore  and  the  bestis 
of  the  feeld  ; 

the  foulis  of  heuene,  and  the  fishis  of  the  se ; 
that  thurz  gon  the  sties  of  the  se. 

Lord,  oure  Lord  ;  hou  myche  merueilous  is  thi 
name  in  al  erthe.^ 


^  If  the  above  is  read  aloud  it  will  be  found 
almost  to  correspond  in  sound  with  the  familiar 
words  of  the  A.V.,  although  to  the  eye  it  looks 
so  different.  But  in  doing  so,  it  is  important  to 
observe  the  interchangeable  use  of  u  and  v.  In 
the  first  verse,  merudlous  looks  strange  ;  but  if  we 
read  the  ti  as  v^  we  hear  a  word  almost  the  same 
as  "marvellous."  In  the  next  verse,  if  we  read  the 
ti  in  "  heuenes  "  as  a  v,  we  hear  the  word  "  heavens." 
In  the  same  verse  we  see  an  instance  of  the  oppo- 
site change  ;  vp  is  clearly  "  up."  The  "  grete 
doing "  of  God  is  "  reared  up  "  over  the  heavens. 
In  the  next  verse  again,  the  vn  in  vnspekende 
is  clearly  un.     The  "un-speaking  child"  is  the 


EARLY  ENGLISH  VERSIONS     8i 

You  must  remember  that  the  printing- 
press  at  that  time  was  not  yet  invented,  and 
all  books  were  manuscripts,  written  out  by 
hand,  so  that  copies  were  few,  and  in  the 
hands  of  only  few  people.  But  so  great 
was  the  interest  taken  in  WyclifFe's  enter- 
prise, that  quite  a  number  of  men  accus- 
tomed to  copying  correctly  came  forward 
for  the  work,  and  laboured  hard  to  produce 
copies.  Of  course  it  was  terrible  toil  to 
write  out  the  whole  Bible,  and  took  even 
a  skilful  writer  several  months ;  yet  very 
many  copies  were  made,  and  were  eagerly 
purchased.  Not  for  sixpence,  as  you  may 
pay  for  a  Bible  now  !  The  cost  was  so 
great — it  is  said  ^^50  and  more — that  only 
wealthy  people  could  afford  a  copy  for 
themselves.  Even  for  a  few  loose  pages  a 
large  sum  would  be  offered.  People  even 
paid  to  be  allowed  to  come  to  a  house 
where  there  was  a  copy,  and  to  read  it  for 
an  hour  a  day.     Some  managed  in  this  way 

babe.  We  must  remember  that  Wycliffe  translated 
from  the  Latin  Vulgate.  "Crete  doing"  is  an 
ultra-literal  rendering  of  the  Latin  magtiificentia. 
"Lassedest,"  in  the  6th  verse  (5th  in  A.V.),  which 
means  "  madest  him  less,"  is  a  translation  of  the 
Latin  minuisti. 

F 


82     THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

to  learn   portions  by  heart,  and   then  went 
and  repeated  them  to  others. 

But  the  chief  authorities  in  the  Church 
were  indignant  that  "the  Gospel  pearl,"  as 
one  said,  was  "  cast  abroad  and  trodden 
underfoot  of  swine."  The  Archbishop  of 
York  wrote  to  the  Pope  of  "that  pestilent 
wretch,  John  WyclifFc,  the  son  of  the  old 
Serpent,  the  forerunner  of  Antichrist,  who 
had  completed  his  iniquity  by  inventing  a 
new  translation  of  the  Scriptures."  In  1378 
there  was  a  great  Council  held  at  the 
monastery  of  the  Black  Friars  in  London, 
consisting  of  eight  bishops  and  many  other 
learned  men,  to  consider  the  teachings  of 
Wycliffe.  While  they  were  debating,  the 
city  was  suddenly  shaken  by  an  earthquake, 
and  the  terrified  Council  at  first  took  it  as 
a  judgment  of  God  on  their  proceedings  ; 
but  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  declared 
that  it  was  a  sign  of  the  earthquake  in 
men's  minds  that  was  needed  to  overthrow 
Wycliffe's  errors  ;  whereupon  his  teachings 
were  unanimously  condemned.  When  the 
new  English  Bible  appeared,  a  bill  was 
brought  into  Parliament  forbidding  its  circu- 
lation, though  not  passed  ;  and  Convocation 
threatened  to  excommunicate  any  translator. 


EARLY  ENGLISH  VERSIONS    83 

Persecution  fell  upon  WyclifFe's  followers, 
whom  their  enemies  called  Lollards,  from  a 
word  meaning  one  who  mumbles  prayers  and 
hymns.  If  you  stand  on  Westminster  Bridge 
and  look  up  the  River  Thames,  you  will  see 
beyond  St.  Thomas's  Hospital,  on  your  left 
hand,  Lambeth  Palace,  which  is  the  re- 
sidence of  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  ; 
and  the  highest  of  its  towers  is  called  the 
Lollards'  Tower,  because  they  were  im- 
prisoned there.  You  must  not  suppose  that 
these  Lollards  were  all  good  men.  On  the 
contrary,  they  became  a  large  body  of  very 
troublesome  people,  discontented  and  re- 
bellious ;  and  the  persecution  was  for  the 
most  part  not  about  religion.  But  among 
them  were  earnest  Christians  who  suffered 
for  the  bad  conduct  of  the  rest.  Some  of 
these  were  burnt  alive  at  Smithfield.  The 
first  of  these  was  a  godly  priest  whose  crime 
was  that  he  had  said,  "  I  adore  not  the  cross 
on  which  Christ  suffered,  but  I  adore  Christ 
who  suffered  on  it."  Lady  Jane  Boughton 
was  burnt  at  eighty  years  of  age,  and  Sir 
John  Oldcastle  was  roasted  over  a  slow  fire. 
Some  of  the  victims,  it  is  said,  were  bound  to 
the  stake  with  copies  of  parts  of  Wycliffe's 
Bible  tied  round  their  necks.     Efforts  were 


84     THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

afterwards  made  to  destroy  all  the  copies  in 
England,  just  as  the  early  Greek  manuscripts 
had  been  destroyed  by  the  Roman  Emperors ; 
but  many  were  kept  safe,  and  no  less  than 
one  hundred  and  seventy  remain  to  this  day. 
They  are  much  valued  by  those  who  possess 
them ;  and  some  time  ago,  when  a  copy 
was  for  sale,  the  price  asked  was  ^lOOO. 
It  is  a  curious  thing  to  remember  that 
WyclifFe's  Bible  was  printed  for  the  first  time 
in  the  reign  of  George  II.,  and,  in  a  complete 
form,  in  that  of  Queen  Victoria. 

WyclifFe  himself  died  peacefully  at  Lutter- 
worth. Thirteen  years  after  his  death,  his 
grave  was  opened,  his  bones  were  taken  out 
and  burnt,  and  the  ashes  were  cast  into  a 
neighbouring  brook,  in  token  of  his  life's 
work  having — as  it  was  hoped — come  to 
nought.  But  Thomas  Fuller,  a  quaint 
writer  of  Charles  the  First's  time,  says,  "  The 
brook  conveyed  them  into  the  Avon,  the 
Avon  into  the  Severn,  the  Severn  into  the 
narrow  seas  (Bristol  Channel),  and  they  into 
the  main  ocean ;  and  thus  the  ashes  of 
Wycliffe  were  the  emblem  of  his  doctrine, 
which  is  now  dispersed  all  the  world  over." 


airrpimuo  a  prc.i  mitrdgoDf  Ijua'^il^l 


non  rdncp  niatetu  nnuii  fabts  nbi 
frO  qS  fjatwim"  nb  iumo :  ut  fiiligi 
niuB  fllntutru.fn^- c  tamao  :ut  am 
bulrni"  Wm  matera  n°.  l\ot  raira  f 
iiianDadiiut  qunuaDraoDii  auDi&a 
ab  iiimo  in  ra  ambfcnorqtu  mulo  fr 
Diittorto  mcmt  imuDu  q  no  roftraif 
\iiAu  mlKi  miilTf  iii  canu.Biir  I  frCu.^^ -r 
^j.-if  don anncnfluo.\3iQrtc uofiurapoB  /   " 
•J^J|nt  prWtio  q  opttan  tflie :  frO  ut  mtt'W- 
'^iiDmi  plena  ampians .  Lnmio  q  rttt' 1 
jOu  tt  no  pmanrt  f  Bodniia  rnfJirDcu  ■; 
Tiflliabrr.CuiiJmanttflDttniiarijit  ; 
patrtrtfilmtabtrJjiq'BuritaDDoa  : 
tthaciJodnnaHO  afirrnuolitt  rrnpr^V 
rttuiDonmrnrtaurnijitcnne.lDui  ^ 
mi  Omt  lUwurconuuutarnpnnbn"  .j 
tnalipi'j.iDliii-abatfQ  uobiofaibr--  •- 
rnuolm  p  cana  n  atttamrarii.  &pcto  v 
rtrimrftimriiaiJuDuocirroaaDDD  ' 
loqiii:ut  gniiOm ufiupimfi  fit.  Q-a-t^w 
lutat  tc  filir  forono  tur  rlrdti-ijfplmiW'tJ 
rpin  fcnmiiK  loUfs  Hpli  ,*  iinpir  n'TIk 
jTiiiiynitujii  rpiftiilBni  trmnm .  "^ 
-'^^  ■■  ^'^fl.iu  pirrano  laufa  tpol 
br  aiq;  ut  m  ipfa  pittatr 
niaiuat  trb32rat02:Dioirt  • 
prill  mipittane  tr.fugbit  ' 
sucgar :  oniimia  aiit  bonil 
III  gbibct  cum  &ambue  oni^' 
.qilmt  srgiim"fm.,Innp 
piifpjH  iL-.'.iic  trrna.  nipir  pjinm 
ItuDjrpia  rflniri< 
ino-qutrgoQilipy 
in  Dtnrarc .  iTanlTi'j 
mt-OcDirithjDrdnJ 
onrai  fann  profpttf 
rcttmgrrtiirtualf^< 
fintagitaintua.ifiamP.' 
funi  ual'bc  Qmimttofcambiia  i  tcfti;. 
luoum  gbibnuibuB  pcntan  tur;rimt  v 

»'        "-WT^*;  •''••'A*(«  •tti'ky 


tumumtattarab[a8.)rE 
nn  babra  oraniq;,  ut  aniuamfilioa 
nnoBinnrritatt  ambiilatra.CanDi. 
inr-fiDclita  EansqmtqO  optrano  ia 
ftattr9:i  boc  iptrgunoa-q  ttftiraout 


aim  rtODittoit  tatitaH  tutm  nralpflu 
jcdrfitiquoo  bcutfanraa  titbunaftu 
'gnt  Dto.pco  nomine  mini  tt'^Wi 
funnmibil  arapiitre  a  5fnlibj.)Ro6 
ngo  CcbmmB  iifcipm  buiuthiDiii : 
UT  raopiataiOT  fiuiue  tmtanB.2)m» 
pQCtui  fbifuan  miE&dtij  le  q  araat 
pmamni  gitnt  m  tie  Diotttpta-non 
rtcipttnoD. iDmptbJcD  nmtoiont 
raonra  nua  opra  qur  facie  iihia  raa- 
hgnia  garnro  m  noo.  J&  qiioC  no  ti 
iBaruffinam:ntqiipc  fufnpitfeari 
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nni.lEariffuiicnoliimitan  raaUtm: 
ftO  qti  botiu  ttt.  iDui  bratfacit  ti  dro 
tft:qui  maltfant  no  uiDct  Brii.iJmir- 
too  rtSimonhi  ccbbif  nb  amtoi  ab 
ipa  uraratcfr0 1  noB  rcftunonmgct- 
hib:iiui6:'}  iinttiqiu  tcQuHOiuiinmi 
tctu  c.  llHulta  tebiii  nbi  fttitetrftti  no; 
lui  g  atnamrru  rt  talaum  ftnttrt  nbi. 
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DB  loqunuur.  iBaj  nbi.  Isalutant  it 
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flrifiiuittu'i  qilmu  brnn  lun  flpU' 

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mm  tffc  biffmtt  oc  Qibiugo  frmtl  rtu» 
COB  tuimnD-brauQ  opna  {Jua  o&nie 
UDUflrt  lJtmUibuo.«jpUnr  atsunit 
niiii-ximpif  rplabfan  mCr  npU . 
(Hbas  ibriii  cnBi  ftruuB  fcaia:  aut? 
iacobi  Jjiie  qui  funt  in  Dto  pant  bdl- 
tha-1  cnfto  ibr  fu  tcntcuana  tt  uota< 
na.  jIHifmcmDia  uobio  ct  par  rt  ran- 
abiinplfatur.£an[^upi  omntiu 


A  Page  of  Gutenberg's  Latin  Bible,  the  earliest 

PRINTED    BOOK,    ABOUT     I455     A.  D.    (PARTS    OF    THE    2ND 

AND  3RD  Epistles  of  St.  John). 

(^From  the  illujitinated  copy  in  Lambeth  Palace  Library 
By pcr:nission  0/  the  Archbishop  0/  Canterbury.') 

To  face  p.  85. 


CHAPTER    VII 

ABOUT    THE    MIDDLE    AGES    AND    THE 
REVIVAL    OF    LEARNING 

That  wonderful  Latin  Version  of  Saint 
Jerome's,  called  the  Vulgate,  was,  as  we 
have  seen,  the  Bible  of  Europe  for  a  thousand 
years.  The  best  occupation  of  the  monks 
in  their  monasteries  was  making  copies  of 
it,  some  of  which  were  beautifully  written, 
and  adorned  with  "  illuminations,"  coloured 
borders  or  small  pictures  or  ornamental  letters 
at  the  beginning  of  chapters.  In  some 
monasteries  there  was  a  room  called  the 
Scriptorium,  or  writing-room,  in  which  the 
work  was  done  ;  but  sometimes  the  monks 
did  it  in  their  own  cells.  There  were  also 
strict  rules  about  reading  the  Bible.  At  the 
great  Abbey  of  Cluny,  in  France,  the  monks 
read  aloud  in  turn  in  the  evening,  the  Book 
of  Genesis  occupying  a  week,  and  the  Epistle 

85 


86     THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

to  the  Romans  two  evenings.  They  also 
had  to  know  all  the  Psalms  by  heart.  Some 
of  them  wrote  important  books  in  Latin, 
which  we  have  in  English,  such  as  the 
Imitation  of  Christy  by  Thomas  a  Kempis  j 
and  beautiful  hymns,  such  as  "Jerusalem 
the  Golden,"  "All  glory,  laud,  and  power," 
"Jesu,  the  very  thought  of  Thee,"  "O 
come  all  ye  faithful,"  and  many  others. 

But  all  this  did  little  or  nothing  for  the 
people  generally.  If  they  went  to  church, 
they  heard  the  Lessons  read  in  Jerome's 
Latin  Version,  which  they  did  not  under- 
stand ;  and  even  if  they  had  known,  and 
had  learned  to  read,  the  bishops  and  clergy 
did  not  think  it  right  that  they  should  read 
the  Scriptures.  We  saw  in  the  last  chapter 
how  it  was  discouraged  in  England  ;  and  the 
Council  of  Toulouse,  in  France,  in  1229, 
said,  "  We  forbid  the  common  people  to 
possess  any  of  the  Books  of  the  Old  and 
New  Testaments,  except  perhaps  the  Psalter, 
or  the  Breviary,  or  the  Hours  of  the  Blessed 
Virgin  [these  two  being  of  course  not  Scrip- 
tures], which  some  out  of  devotion  wish  to 
have ;  but  having  any  of  these  translated 
into  the  vulgar  tongue  we  strictly  forbid," 


ABOUT  THE  MIDDLE  AGES    87 

What  led  to  this  decree  was  the  discovery 
that  there  were  people  in  the  valleys  of  the 
Alps  who  had  some  parts  of  Scripture  in 
their  own  dialect,  which  was  derived  from 
the  Latin.  Their  forefathers  had  been 
taught  the  pure  Gospel  by  a  Bishop  of 
Turin  in  the  9th  century,  a  Spaniard  named 
Claude,  who  in  that  darkest  of  dark  ages 
condemned  the  adoration  of  images  and  relics 
and  other  corrupt  customs  in  the  Church. 
Then  in  the  12th  century  there  was  a  good 
merchant  of  Lyons,  Peter  Waldo,  who  be- 
came a  leader  among  them,  and  from  whom 
they  have  since  been  called  Waldenses.  It 
is  supposed  that  he,  being  a  man  of  learning, 
gave  them  the  version  of  the  Gospels  in 
their  own  tongue.  Here  is  the  first  verse  of 
St.  John  in  it  : — "  Lo  filh  era  al  comenexa- 
menty  e  lo  filh  era  enapres  Dio^  e  Dio  era  lo 
filhr 

Among  other  versions  of  parts  of  the 
Bible  made  from  time  to  time  v/as  the 
Slavonic,  for  the  Bulgarian  and  other  Slav 
races.  This  was  the  work  of  two  brothers, 
Greek  monks  from  Thessalonica,  Cyril  and 
Methodius,  in  the  9th  century.  It  is  from 
the   church    which    they    founded   that    the 


88     THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

modern  Moravians  (the  "  United  Brethren  "), 
who  have  done  such  w^onderful  missionary 
v^rork,  are  descended. 

After  the  time  of  these  Versions,  the  most 
important  v^^ork  was  Wycliffe's  in  England, 
of  which  we  saw  something  in  the  last 
chapter.  That  was  in  the  14th  century. 
But  the  next  century,  the  15th,  was  the 
greatest  epoch  in  the  Story  of  the  Bible, 
the  greatest  at  least  since  the  Canon  was 
settled.  For  the  15th  century  saw  two 
great  events. 

I.  One  was  the  Revival  of  Greek  Learning. 
In  the  ages  we  have  been  looking  at,  even 
learned  men  generally  did  not  know  Greek 
or  Hebrew,  and  could  not  read  the  Scriptures 
in  the  languages  in  which  they  were  written. 
Two  great  men  in  England  in  the  13th 
century  knew  Greek ;  Roger  Bacon,  the 
philosopher,  and  Grosteste,  the  good  Bishop 
of  Lincoln  ;  but  there  were  very  few  others, 
The  revival  came  from  a  great  disaster. 
The  Turks,  who  had  come  from  Central 
Asia,  captured  Constantinople  in  1453,  and 
set  up  a  Mohammedan  Empire  in  the  city 
where  Greek  Christian  Emperors  had  reigned 
for  a   thousand  years,   from  the  days  of  old 


ABOUT  THE  MIDDLE  AGES    89 

Rome.  Learned  Greeks  fled  to  Italy  and 
France  and  Germany,  and  brought  with  them 
the  wonderful  books,  histories  and  treatises 
and  poems,  Thucydides  and  Plato  and  Homer 
and  Sophocles,  which  the  ancient  Greeks 
had  written  long  long  ago,  and  some  of 
which  English  boys  and  girls  now  read  at 
school  and  college.  They  were  received  with 
enthusiasm,  and  Greek  study  was  eagerly 
taken  up  at  Florence  and  Paris  and  Oxford  ; 
while  it  was  a  German,  John  Reuchlin,  who 
did  most  to  help  the  students  by  writing 
grammars  and  dictionaries  in  both  Greek  and 
Hebrew.  One  curious  thing  that  followed 
was  that  clever  men  took  Greek  names 
instead  of  their  own.  For  instance,  there 
was  a  Dutchman  named  Gerhard  (which  in 
his  language  means  "  beloved  "),  and  he  took 
the  name  of  Erasmus  (which  means  the 
same  in  Greek) ;  and  a  German  named 
Schwarzerd  ("  black  earth ")  translated  his 
name  also  into  Greek,  and  called  himself 
Melanchthon,  which  means  the  same  thing. 
But  the  greatest  fact  of  all  is  that  the  fugi- 
tives from  Constantinople  brought  also  old 
Greek  manuscripts  of  the  New  Testament ; 
and    so  it  was  said  that  **  Greece  had  risen 


90     THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

from  the  dead  with  the  New  Testament  in 
her  hand."i 

2.  The  other  event  was  the  Invention 
of  Printing.  It  was  a  wonderful  day  indeed 
when  John  Gutenberg,  a  German  of  May- 
ence  on  the  Rhine,  hit  on  the  idea  that 
movable  types,  letters  cut  in  metal,  and  inked, 
could  be  used  to  print  books,  and  thus  save 
the  enormous  labour  of  writing  out  every 
copy  of  every  book  by  hand.  Gutenberg 
thought  and  thought  and  thought  about  it 
for  twenty  years,  and  then  let  a  goldsmith 
named  Fust  into  his  secret ;  and  Fust  pro- 
vided the  money  to  prepare  the  types  and 
the  press-machine.  Now  the  first  complete 
book  printed  by  Gutenberg  at  Mayence 
was  the  Bible,  about  1455.  It  was  of  course 
the  Vulgate,  the  great  Latin  Version  which 
had  been  used  ever  since  the  time  of  St. 
Jerome.  Everybody  was  astonished ;  here 
was  a  book  which  no  one  had  written  with 
a  pen  :  how  could  it  have  been  done  ?  In 
after  years  Fust  was  accused  of  being  in 
league  with  the  Devil,  because  he  produced 

*  These  words  are  often  quoted,  but  the  author 
of  them  is  rarely  mentioned.  It  was  Professor 
GoldwJn  Smith,  in  his  Historical  Lectures. 


ABOUT  THE  MIDDLE  AGES     91 

the  wonderful  printed  pages.  But  of  course 
the  secret  could  not  be  kept  long  :  and  in  a 
few  years  there  were  printing-presses  at  various 
German  cities,  and  at  Paris,  and  at  Rome,  and 
in  London.  The  first  in  England  was  set  up 
at  Westminster  Abbey  by  William  Caxton  in 
1476.  Before  the  end  of  the  century,  more 
than  a  hundred  editions  of  the  Latin  Vulgate 
are  said  to  have  been  printed  ! 

These  were  the  two  great  events  of  the 
15th  century  which  had  to  do  with  the 
Bible.  And  another  was  when  the  Scrip- 
tures began  to  be  printed  in  their  original 
languages.  The  Hebrew  Old  Testament 
was  the  first.  It  was  done  by  the  Jews, 
for  use  in  their  synagogues.  The  Christians 
were  satisfied  with  the  Latin  Vulgate,  and 
the  Greek  New  Testament  was  not  printed 
until  that  century  was  over.  A  little  frag- 
ment of  it,  just  the  Songs  of  Mary  and 
Zacharias,  from  St.  Luke's  Gospel, — what 
we  call  in  our  Prayer-book  the  Magnificat 
and  the  Benedictus, — were  put  at  the  end 
of  a  Greek  Psalter  (Book  of  Psalms)  printed 
at  Venice  in  1486;^    and  that  was  the  first 

1  Or,  appended  to  a  Greek  Psalter  printed  at 
Milan  in  1481. 


92     THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

bit  of  the  Greek  Scriptures  struck  off  from 
the  new  types.  But  who  was  the  first 
person  to  order  the  printing  of  the  whole 
Greek  New  Testament  ?  It  was  a  Roman 
Cardinal !  He  was  a  very  great  man,  a 
Spaniard  named  Ximenes,  who  became  Arch- 
bishop of  Toledo  and  the  chief  statesman 
in  the  kingdom  when  Spain  was  one  of 
the  most  powerful  countries  of  Europe. 
The  book  he  got  printed  was  an  immense 
one.  It  had  in  it  the  Hebrew  Old 
Testament,  and  the  Jewish  Targums  or 
Paraphrases  on  it  (which  I  explained  before), 
and  the  Septuagint  Greek  Old  Testament, 
and  the  Greek  New  Testament,  and  the 
Latin  Vulgate  :  all  these  !  Fancy  the  labour 
of  compiling  such  a  book  !  It  was  begun 
to  be  printed  in  1502;  the  New  Testament 
was  ready  in  15 14;  and  the  whole  was 
published  in   1522.^ 

But  meanwhile,  another  Greek  Testa- 
ment, though  not  printed  first,  was  published 
first.  This  was  prepared  with  great  labour 
by  that  learned   Dutchman   who   had  taken 

^  This  noble  work  was  called  the  Complutensian 
Polyglot.  The  various  texts  were  arranged  in 
parallel  columns.     Copies  are  still  to  be  seen. 


ABOUT  THE  MIDDLE  AGES     93 

the  name  of  Erasmus.  He  was  the  most 
brilliant  scholar  and  writer  of  the  period. 
He  was  for  some  years  in  England,  and 
he  studied  at  Oxford  and  lectured  at  Cam- 
bridge. He  wrote  a  great  many  books,  in- 
cluding "  paraphrases  "  or  expositions  of  the 
Books  of  the  New  Testament.  But  his 
great  work  was  his  edition  of  the  Greek 
Testament,  first  published  in  15 16.  He  had 
searched  for  old  Greek  manuscripts,  such 
as  I  spoke  of  in  a  previous  chapter ;  and  he 
carefully  compared  them,  so  as  to  get  as 
near  as  possible  to  the  actual  words  of  the 
sacred  writers.  Do  you  remember  how  I 
told  you  about  that  7th  verse  in  the  5th 
chapter  of  St.  John's  First  Epistle,  that  it 
is  not  in  any  of  the  old  MSS.,  and  there- 
fore has  been  left  out  of  our  Revised  Version  ? 
Well,  it  has  a  curious  history.  Erasmus 
could  not  find  it  in  any  of  the  MSS.,  so 
he  left  it  out  of  his  Greek  Testament.  But 
then  as  it  was  in  the  Latin  Vulgate,  other 
learned  men  complained,  and  said,  "  You 
have  no  right  to  leave  out  a  verse  of  the 
Bible!"  Erasmus  replied,  "If  you  will 
show  me  one  Greek  MS.  which  has  that 
verse  in  it,  I  will  put  it  again  in  my  edition." 


94     THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

And  they  did  find  one  ! — but  it  was  not 
an  old  MS.  at  all,  and  had  only  been  copied 
a  few  years  before.  Still,  Erasmus  kept  his 
promise,  and  when  he  had  to  print  his  third 
edition,  he  put  the  verse  in  again.  That 
is  how  it  has  come  down  to  us,  although 
we  may  be  sure  St.  John  never  wrote  it ! 

After  Erasmus,  other  learned  men  prepared 
editions  of  the  Greek  Testament ;  and  the 
most  important  of  these  was  published  at 
Paris  in  1550.  The  editors  and  printers 
were  Robert  Etienne  and  his  son  Henry. 
They  were  Frenchmen  ;  but  the  Latin  form 
of  their  names  being  Stephanus,  they  are  often 
called  Stephens  (or  more  correctly  Stephen) 
in  English  books.  They  compared  the  MSS. 
they  found  in  the  Royal  Library  at  Paris 
with  Erasmus's  edition  and  with  the  one 
printed  in  Spain  by  order  of  Cardinal  Ximenes; 
and  in  after  years,  when  their  work  had  been 
revised  again  and  again,  it  was  beautifully 
printed  by  some  Dutch  printers  named  Elzevir, 
and  was  received  everywhere  as  containing 
the  true  w^ords  of  the  inspired  Scriptures. 
These  Dutch  printers  called  it  a  text  received 
by  all ;  so  it  came  to  be  called  Textus  ReceptuSy 
the  Received  Text.     We  now  know  that  it 


ABOUT  THE  MIDDLE  AGES     95 

was  not  perfect,  because  the  oldest  and  best 
MSS.  have  been  discovered  since ;  but  it 
is  still  very  useful.  It  was  Stephen  who 
first  arranged  the  words  in  verses.  The 
chapter  divisions  had  been  first  made,  in 
the  Latin  Vulgate,  by  a  famous  Archbishop 
of  Canterbury  named  Stephen  Langton,  in 
the  13th  century;^  and  now  the  French 
Stephen  (Etienne)  marked  ofiF  the  verses. 

But  you  will  see  that  the  work  of  Erasmus 
and  the  others,  after  all,  only  helped  learned 
men.  It  was  very  good  that  they  should 
know  that  their  familiar  Bible,  the  Latin 
Vulgate,  was  only  a  translation,  and  that 
they  should  have  the  inspired  writings  of 
St.  Paul  and  St.  John  and  St.  Luke  in  the 
Greek,  nearly  as  they  were  written.  Still, 
this  did  not  put  the  Word  of  God  into  the 
hands  of  the  people.  But  Erasmus  did  wish 
the  people  to  have  the  Bible.  He  said,  "I 
desire  that  even  the  weakest  woman  should 
read  the  Gospels,  and  the  Epistles  of  Paul. 
I  long  that  the  husbandman  should  sing 
portions   of  them   to  himself  as  he   follows 

1  The  chapter  divisions  have  always  been  attri- 
buted to  Cardinal  Hugo,  but  it  has  lately  been 
ascertained  that  he  took  them  from  Langton. 


96     THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

the  plough  ;  that  the  weaver  should  hum 
them  to  the  tune  of  his  shuttle  ;  that  the 
traveller  should  beguile  w^ith  their  stories  the 
tedium  of  his  journey."  Now^,  then,  what 
was  done  to  bring  this  about  ? 

Many  translations  of  the  Scriptures  were 
made  into  various  European  languages  during 
the  next  hundred  years  ;  into  English,  French, 
German,  Russian,  Swedish,  Danish,  Polish, 
Spanish,  Icelandic,  Welsh,  Hungarian,  Dutch, 
Italian.  The  most  important  of  these  were 
the  English  and  the  German.  Of  the  Eng- 
lish we  will  hear  in  another  chapter.  The 
new  German  Version  was  the  work  of 
Luther. 

Martin  Luther  was  a  German  monk  who 
became  a  learned  professor  of  theology,  and 
gave  lectures  at  the  University  of  Wittenberg 
which  were  attended  by  large  numbers  of 
students.  He  had  studied  the  Bible  well, 
and  had  learned  the  truth  of  which  St.  Paul 
says  so  much,  that  "  the  just  shall  live  by 
faith."  At  that  time  most  of  the  bishops  and 
clergy  of  the  Church  taught  many  doctrines 
v/hich  are  not  the  true  teaching  of  Scripture  ; 
and  there  was  much  that  was  very  sad  in 
their  lives.      Then  came    the    Reformation, 


ABOUT  THE  MIDDLE  AGES     97 

and  Luther  was  the  greatest  of  the  Re- 
formers, who  all  taught,  among  other  things, 
three  grand  truths  :  first,  that  we  are  saved, 
not  by  our  good  deeds  (for  our  good  deeds 
never  can  be  good  enough),  but  by  faith  in 
Jesus  Christ  as  our  one  and  only  Saviour  ; 
secondly,  that  we  can  go  straight  to  our 
Heavenly  Father  through  Jesus  Christ,  and 
tell  Him  our  sins,  and  He  will  forgive  us  for 
Christ"'s  sake  ;  thirdly,  that  God's  messages 
for  us  are  in  the  Bible,  and  we  must  go  to 
the  Bible  to  know  His  will  and  His  truth. 

So  Luther  determined  to  give  the  German 
people  the  Scriptures  afresh  in  their  own 
mother-tongue,  translated  direct  from  the 
Hebrew  and  Greek ;  ^  and  while  he  was 
shut  up  in  a  castle  called  the  Wartburg  (not 
as  a  prisoner,  but  to  protect  him),  he  trans- 
lated the  whole  Bible  into  German.  The 
New  Testament  was  finished  1522  ;  and  the 
whole  was  completed  in  1534.  It  has  been 
an  immense  blessing  to  Germany ;  and  it 
was  largely  used  by  the  men  who  made 
some  of  the  Versions  I  mentioned  before, 
the  Swedish,  the  Danish,  and  others. 

1  There  were  German  translations  of  the 
Vulgate  before  Luther. 

G 


98     THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

If  you  have  not  read  the  life  of  Luther, 
I  hope  you  will  do  so.  He  was  not  a  perfect 
man,  but  he  was  a  good  one,  and  he  did  a 
wonderful  work.  We  must  always  thank 
God  for  Martin  Luther. 


f ««»  ^  nu  (b«tW  b(  «to«c3  ml  nuf  (  ^m 
«iilvlf>*  •t«b««i»l>toc5panT.  anb  w(p«n 

Mamr  bcaflca  of  et><  ftl6«,  t  oUmaiwr  fitii- 
U«  vntXTthtlDttuf ,  l}C  bsouj  t*  tbtw  wit* 
nwn.to  f*  tt  l>jt  t>«  wolM  cjlk  W:  ^  w  «»  ma 
callcbuUmaiurof1>a>n9rrc>ul^.(>iir;tb«ir 
n4inc8. Sinbrtiangauc  names  vntoaHnia' 
ncrc«cU.?  rntctbc  foulcax<ii&trt^c  li«uc, 
(in&tin(OttUman(rbcaflt«of  f  fi't!>c.2>ut 
rnto  man  t  hc«  veaf  founbc  no  helpe.to  b«4 
re  bim  company. 

•  Jrt>cnttitLORD£®oti  «u|cbanl;trbc 
flcpe  to  fallspon  tiwii,  an!?  Jic  (ltptc.2lnb  Ijc 
toFc  out  one  of  hia  rybbce .  anb(  m  (Uabc 
tbctofifeic  fyllcO  cp  :?  placcwitti  flcfti-ln.h 
t^cLORDECBiObma&Cijajoinan.of-  f  xyb 
btt^M  tjt  tote  out  ofman,an6  bjougtt  ^cr 
rntoijim.  J:boif<r9l)Ctnan;CT)iei9  onctbo 
ne  of  my  boneft,  anC  fUfl?  of  my  flcfl? .  Sfec 
f^ulbc  called  TBOmon ,  bccaufcltjt  xoastc^i 
tifman.  ^o:  tl)ie  coule  fljol  a  man  Uaut  fa' 
t^fran&motl)Cf,anfecleuc»nto  tji«  tcifi.t 
t^ctt«»)0  ^albt  one  flefl?.2lnb  t^  i»«e 
botbtiaffb,t^c  man  anb^ia  Wife,  ant>te«re 
tiot^lVameb. 


^^em.£I)aptcr. 
t>ttl)c  rerpcnt  waafit^llccttjenall 
dje  bcafUe  of t^e  fd&e(w^i*  i  LOR 


tt^  it|.  C>ai*.  I^tt- 

nM  c>ut»f  afi  nuMt  r?c(«  mt<K  Mit**. 
CNn  faf6<  t^  vonwin  xntotti*  fcrfvat. 
tr((at<of ctK  fruuof  tt)«tt(r* uitN^ 
^fit:25uc  <t»  fo:  t^  fhitc  of  ttH  tn  :^vu  i»  Mt 
tbtni?^^*'  of t^  gi;r&tn.49o;>  ^4tt)|av 
*c  :<iatt  not  yc  of  lit,. anbcoucb  It  not,U(l 
y«b7C. 

Ctioi  (al^c  t  Ix  ff  tptnt  tmto  the  tooman: 
•  iCu(^,7<  (ball  not  ^v<  *  t»«  bcatt:  ^o:  (Po& 
t^  Pnoox,  t  tjot  in  n>t)at  b«v<  f*  «  uft  f*  w 
tt  of  it,"90utc  f^  fpaJbc  optntb.anfe  y*  (b^l 
be  a»  (Pofe.ont  Pnotoe  bot  f  gooO  anb  cutU. 
2tnb  t^  wcman  fawc  t^at  }  etc  wa»  goo* 
to  cattof.anb  lu<>7c  vntotlic  cyc«,,a<l&A 
pkofaunc  trftom«P«ttr9(c,anb  to(^oftfc< 
ftutc  of  It ,  an^  ate ,  «nb  gauf  wco  bit  buf- 
bonbcalfo  tijctof ,  arCb  t?<  ace .  IK-n  tttix 
tbc  t7<e  of  t^cm  boti?  opoteO  ,  anft  t^ 
pctceaucfe  t^at  tlity  wct«  note*  ,  an*  fo- 
u^cb  f;ggc(cau«etogtt^,anbinabrt|;)att 
apume. 

2lnt>  they  lxr&«  t^c  vofct  of  t^  L  O  R- 
D  E  f6o*.«»t''<i?  Jsolf  «b  in  tl)«  g««^cti  in  tb» 
■cook  of  tt)c  Oayf .  2lrtb  abam  ^^  tJtmfHf 
»it^  l)i9  W'ffe,  from  tt?c  pjcfcncc  of  f  LOR 
D£  (Bob  iMtionge  t^c  ttcea  of  tl^Mgarbtn. 
2lnb  ^  LOROE«0o6c4Ucb2t*«m,anb^7 
be  tnto^im.-XX'^ctc  artt^iou  :2lnb  ^xfaibc: 
3  berbc  t^<9  voyct  in  tbc  gaibtn .  an*  wa« 
afraycb ,  bccaufe^am  naPcb,  ant)  tbctfoK 
3  fTbmvfclf.2lnb  be(aTbcarl)Ototoctt>c, 
tbat  tbouartnaPeb:  .^ali  tl)ou  noteatcn  of 
thctrf,a>ljtrof  tJ  eommaunbcbt^,  f  tbou 
(Vuibtflnoteatt: 

Zi)tn  fa<p*t  ab«m :  «L^e  woman  »l)ict) 
tbou  gauefl  me(to  beatcmc  compt»nv)gauc 
mc  of  tbc  tte ,  anb  ^  ate .  anfet^e  L  ORDE 
(Bob  (a^c  wito  tbt  woman :  teljcrfbje  i)a\l 
tbou  bone  tbi8  ;Clbt»omanfaTbc:tt>«(er- 
pent  bifctaueb  me  (o.ttjat  3  atc.Cbtn  fa'jbc 
tt)e  L  OR  D  E  (Pob  wto  tt)e  ferpcntOSecau - 
fit^oubafj  bone  tbi8 ,  cuffcb  bttbouabouc 
allcattll  an*  aboiM  all  txafita  of  the  filbe. 
Xipon  ttj'j  beW  ftalt  tt>ou  go ,  t  caret)  (i^alt 
tbC'U  catc  all  t^ebafea  of  t^Tlift .  2ln«>3 
wyll put cncmyte  bcttsort  t^c' an*  t^a>o- 
tnan  anbbcttxxm  y  feSc  an*  ^  ft*t.»^:^;ic 
fame  fljal  trtab<bon»i«  ttrj  Ijttbe^bt^oo 
l^aJt  btcabc  t>tm  on  t^  t>eU. 

2lnb  wito  t^  woman  fyt  /<:yb«3toiU  im 

crcafc  tlj^  fe  JO  w ,  whan  e^ou  art  wtti)  d?»J- 
bcnwtb  paTfte  fl;ale  tljott  bcaretl?^  cfcilbtf, 
anb.tbvluf^  ft»«lp«W7ntwitoi^  ^a^bon 
*e,a  nb  tx  fl^a  I  rule  tl)e. 
2UiC>  vnto  21*amt;e  |ayb(;5«:loi>i«4)a0 


ctJK 

.„(...|t 
iim,:N 


i 


<Stnt 
tcate.  - 
•IbwJ 
(^att. 


A  Page  from  Coverdale's  Bible,  1535. 

To/ace^.  99. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

ABOUT    THE    BIBLES    OF    THE    ENGLISH 
REFORMATION 

Let  us  now  come  back  to  England,  and  see 
how  the  English  people  came  to  have  a 
Bible  in  their  mother-tongue.  We  have 
seen  how  Wycliffe  gave  them  one,  and 
how  the  histories  and  teachings  of  Scripture 
gradually  became  better  known  to  many. 
But  WyclifFe's  Bible  was  only  a  translation 
from  Jerome's  Latin  Vulgate  ;  and  copies  of 
it,  being  all  written  by  hand,  and  very  ex- 
pensive, could  not  really  get  into  the  people's 
hands ;  besides  which,  a  great  many  copies 
had  perished,  as  I  told  you  before.  The 
man  whom  God  raised  up  to  make  the 
first  English  Version  of  the  New  Testament 
from  the  original  Greek,  and  to  use  the  new 
printing-press  to  produce  copies,  was  William 
Tyndale. 

99 


100    THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

Tyndale  was  one  of  the  students — he  was 
at  both  Oxford  and  Cambridge — who  was 
fascinated  by  the  New  Learning  I  told  you 
of  in  the  last  chapter,  and  learned  Greek 
thoroughly.  At  Cambridge  he  might  hear 
that  learned  Dutchman,  Erasmus,  lecturing 
on  the  Greek  classics.  Now  Erasmus  had 
just  finished  his  edition  of  the  Greek  Testa- 
ment, which  also  I  mentioned  in  our  last 
chapter,  and  very  likely  Tyndale  studied  it 
carefully.  Like  Erasmus,  he  wished  the 
Bible  to  be  put  into  the  hands  of  the  people. 
In  reply  to  one  man  who  thought  that  only 
the  clergy  should  read  it,  Tyndale,  who  was 
a  clergyman  himself,  said,  "If  God  spare 
my  life,  ere  many  years  I  will  cause  a  boy 
that  driveth  the  plough  shall  know  more  of 
the  Scripture  than  thou  dost !  "  He  came 
to  London  in  1523,  hoping  that  the  Bishop, 
a  learned  man  named  Tunstall,  would  en- 
courage him  to  set  about  the  work  ;  but  he 
was  disappointed.  Most  of  the  bishops  and 
leading  men  in  the  Church  were  then  against 
anything  of  the  kind.  They  were  afraid 
of  what  they  called  the  new  teachings  of 
Luther  and  the  other  Reformers.  But  if 
those  teachings  were  wrong,  what  could  be 


REFORMATION  BIBLES       loi 

better  than  to  print  the  Bible,  which  would 
show  them  to  be  wrong  ?  We  know,  how- 
ever, that  they  were  not  wrong,  and  not 
new,  for  they  were  the  teachings  of  Jesus 
Christ  and  His  Apostles,  which  we  learn 
about  in  the  Bible.  Unhappily  most  of  the 
bishops  and  clergy  did  not  preach  the  simple 
teachings  of  our  Lord  and  the  Apostles  ; 
some  did  not  even  know  them ;  and  at 
that  very  time  they  were  putting  in  prison 
and  putting  to  death  people  who  believed 
them.  There  was  a  good  Dean  of  St.  Paul's 
named  Colet,  who  had  preached  there  so 
earnestly  as  to  startle  London  ;  and  he  would 
m-ost  likely  have  been  burnt  alive  if  King 
Henry  VIII.  had  not  rather  liked  him.  So 
now  we  see  why  the  great  change  in  the 
Church  of  England  was  necessary  which  we 
call  the  Reformation. 

At  last  Tyndale  left  England  and  went 
to  Germany.  He  wrote,  "  I  perceive  that 
not  only  in  my  lord  of  London's  palace, 
but  in  all  England,  there  is  no  room  for 
translating  the  New  Testament."  He  had 
already  begun  the  work,  and  he  finished  it 
at  Cologne.  He  took  the  Greek  Testament 
of  Erasmus,  and  compared  with  it  Jerome's 


102    THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

Latin  Vulgate  and  Luther's  new  German 
Bible,  and  made  his  own  English  Version. 
Then  he  got  6000  copies  printed,  and  in 
1526  all  were  ready.  But  how  was  he  to 
get  them  into  England  ?  King  Henry  and 
Cardinal  Wolsey  had  been  warned  by  a  man 
who  found  out  what  was  going  on,  and 
orders  were  given  to  seize  and  burn  any 
of  the  books  that  might  be  brought  over. 
But  many  did  come  over,  hidden  in  bales  of 
cloth  and  sacks  of  flour.  Bishop  Tunstall  got 
hold  of  one,  took  it  into  the  open-air  pulpit 
outside  St.  Paul's  Cathedral,  declared  that  it 
contained  3000  errors, — and  flung  it  into  a 
fire  burning  close  by.  And  so  complete  was 
the  gradual  destruction  of  those  6000  first 
copies  that  only  two  copies  and  a  fragment 
arc  known  to  be  still  in  existence.  One  of 
them  is  in  St.  PauPs  Cathedral,  and  reckoned 
a  great  treasure.  But  Tyndale  went  on 
printing  new  editions,  carefully  revised,  and 
also  began  the  Old  Testament  and  published 
the  Pentateuch.  At  length,  however,  he 
was  arrested  and  imprisoned  under  a  decree 
of  Charles  V.,  Emperor  of  Germany,  and 
was  executed  by  strangling,  and  his  body 
burnt,  at  Vilvorde  in  Belgium  in  1536.     His 


REFORMATION  BIBLES       103 

last  words  were,  "  Lord,  open  the  King  of 
England's  eyes  ! " 

We  have  indeed  cause  to  thank  God 
for  Tyndale's  unselfish  and  devoted  labours. 
To  this  day  we  are  reading  his  words. 
Although  there  have  been  several  revisions 
yet  the  greater  part  of  our  New  Testament 
is  his.  Look  for  instance  at  Matt,  xviii. 
19-27.  In  our  Revised  Version  there  are 
in  those  nine  verses  196  words.  Of  these, 
162  are  in  Tyndale's  Version.  Or  look  at 
the  last  five  verses  of  the  2nd  chapter  of 
Ephesians.  In  those  verses  there  are  82 
words,  and  69  of  these  are  in  Tyndale. 

Here  are  the  five  verses  in  Tyndale's 
Version,  with  the  words  which  our  Bible 
has  altered  in  italics  : — 

18.  For  through  him  we  both  have  an  open  way 
in  [A.V.  access  by]  one  Spirit  unto  the  Father. 

1 9.  Now  therefore  ye  are  no  more  strangers  and 
foreigners,  but  citizens  [A.V.  fellow-citizens]  with 
the  saints  and  of  the  household  of  God, 

20.  And  are  built  upon  the  foundation  of  the 
Apostles  and  Prophets,  Jesus  Christ  [A.V.  adds, 
himself]  being  the  head  [A.V.  chief]  corner-stone. 

21.  To  [A.V.  In]  whom  every  [A.V.  all  the] 
building  coupled  [A.V.  fitly  framed]  together 
groweth  unto  an  holy  temple  in  the  Lord, 


104    THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

22.  In  whom  ye  also  are  bti'tlt  [A.V.  builded] 
together,  and  made  [A,V.  for]  an  habitation  for 
[A.V.  of]  God  in  [A.V.  through]  the  Spirit. 

But  here  and  there  we  find  curious  things 
in  Tyndale's  Bible.  Thus,  in  Matt.  vi.  7, 
where  our  Lord  tells  us  not  to  "use  vain 
repetitions  "  in  prayer,  Tyndale  puts  "  bable 
not  moche "  ;  in  Matt.  xxvi.  30,  where 
Jesus  and  His  disciples  "  sung  an  hymn," 
Tyndale  puts  "said  grace."  In  Gen.  xxxix., 
where  our  present  Bible  has  "The  Lord 
was  with  Joseph,  and  he  was  a  prosperous 
man,"  Tyndale  has  "  he  was  a  luckie 
felowe."  It  is  a  good  thing  for  boys  to 
remember  that  the  right  way  to  be  "lucky 
fellows "  is  to  have  the  Lord  with  them  ! 

Very  quickly  were  "  the  King  of  Eng- 
land's eyes  opened,"  so  far  as  the  printing  of 
the  Bible  was  concerned.  Cardinal  Wolsey 
died,  and  Cranmer  (who  was  afterwards 
the  chief  English  Reformer)  soon  became 
Archbishop  of  Canterbury.  Within  a  year 
of  Tyndale's  death,  King  Henry  licensed 
the  publication  of  the  English  Bible  !  What 
Bible  was  that  ?  First,  a  good  man,  though 
not  so  learned  as  Tyndale,  named  Miles 
Coverdale,  had  completed  an  English  Version 


REFORMATION  BIBLES       105 

of  the  whole  Bible,  not  from  the  Hebrew 
and  Greek,  but  partly  translated  from  the 
Latin  Vulgate,  partly  from  one  of  the 
German  versions,  and  partly  borrowed  from 
Tyndale  with  alterations.  This  Version, 
first  printed  in  1535,  came  to  be  called  the 
"Treacle  Bible,"  because  in  Jer.  viii.  22, 
where  we  now  have  the  words  "  balm  in 
Gilead,"  Coverdale  wrote  "  triacle  in  Galaad." 
Then  came  another  Version  which  was 
known  as  "Matthew's  Bible,"  edited  by  a 
good  man,  John  Rogers,  who  was  afterwards 
burned  alive  at  Smithfield  under  Queen 
Mary,  the  first  martyr  of  her  reign.  In  it, 
the  Pentateuch  and  the  New  Testament 
were  reprinted  from  Tyndale,  and  a  large 
part  of  the  Old  Testament  from  Coverdale. 
This  edition  was  allowed  by  King  Henry 
to  be  dedicated  to  him.  But  then  it  was 
found  to  contain  notes  which  offended  many 
people;  and  another  new  Version  was  planned, 
Coverdale  was  employed  to  make  it,  and  his 
work  was  a  revision  of  Matthew's  Bible.  It 
had  an  engraving  on  the  title-page,  said  to 
have  been  drawn  by  the  great  painter  Holbein, 
which  represents  the  King  handing  Bibles 
to   Cranmer    and    Thomas   Cromwell    (who 


io6    THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

was  afterwards  what  we  should  now  call 
Prime  Minister),  which  they  distribute  to 
the  people,  and  God  in  the  clouds  above 
saying,  "  My  word  shall  not  return  unto  Me 
void."  It  appeared  in  1539,  ^"  large  folio 
size,  and  came  to  be  called  the  Great  Bible. 
Orders  were  given  to  put  a  copy  in  every 
church,  the  copies  being  chained  up  to  pre- 
vent their  being  stolen,  and  the  clergy  were 
ordered  to  "  expressly  provoke,  stir,  and  ex- 
hort every  person  to  read  the  same."  And 
whose  name  do  you  think  was  soon  seen^ 
on  the  title-page  of  this  Bible,  a  large 
part  of  which  was  Tyndale's,  to  give  it 
authority  in  the  King's  name  ?  Bishop 
Tunstall's — the  very  man  who  had  refused 
to  help  Tyndale,  and  who  had  condemned 
and  burnt  Tyndale's  New  Testament  ! 

The  old  English  historian  Strype  says, 
"It  was  wonderful  to  see  with  what  joy  this 
Book  of  God  was  received  .  .  .  and  with 
what  eagerness  it  was  read,  and  what  resort 
to  places  where  the  teaching  of  it  was.  .  .  . 
Even  little  boys  flocked  to  hear  portions  of 
the  Holy  Scripture  read."     It  is  beheved  that 

^  It  was  not  so  in  the  first  edition. 


Title-page  to  the  "Great  Bible,"  1539. 

To  face  p.  io6. 


REFORMATION  BIBLES       107 

20,000  copies  of  the  great  folios  were  printed, 
the  prices  being  ten  and  twelve  shillings, 
which  is  equal  to  ^^6  or  ^7  to-day. 

Some  of  the  words  of  the  Great  Bible 
are  very  familiar  to  us.  The  Psalms  in  our 
Prayer-book  are  taken  from  it,  and  we  know 
how  often  they  read  differently  from  the 
Psalms  in  our  Bible.  For  instance,  in  the 
68th  Psalm,  we  have  in  our  Bible,  "  Ethiopia 
shall  soon  (R.V.,  haste  to)  stretch  out  her 
hands  unto  God  "  ;  but  in  the  Prayer-book  it 
is  "The  Morians'  land  shall  .  .  ."  This 
means  the  land  of  the  Moors,  and  Coverdale 
took  it  from  the  German  Version,  which  has 
Mohrenland.  Then  again,  we  remember  how 
Miss  Havergal  wrote  a  missionary  hymn  on 
the  words  of  the  96th  Psalm,  "Tell  it  out 
among  the  heathen  that  the  Lord  is  King  "  ; 
but  you  will  not  find  that  text  in  our  Bible. 
It  is  only  in  what  we  call  the  Prayer-book 
Version,  and  comes  from  the  Great  Bible  of 
King  Henry.  The  reason  of  this  is  simply 
that  our  Prayer-book  came  out  only  a  few 
years  after  the  Great  Bible  ;  half  a  century 
before  our  own  Bible.  When  the  Prayer- 
book  was  revised  in  Charles  II. 's  time,  the 
Epistles  and  Gospels  and   the   Lessons  were 


io8    THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

taken   from  the   new  Bible,  but   the  Psalms 
remained  as  they  were.^ 

Four  more  English  Versions  appeared  after 
this,  before  our  own  Bible  was  undertaken. 
One  was  by  a  layman  named  Taverner  ;  and 
another,  some  years  later,  by  certain  Bishops 
and  other  learned  men,  under  the  super- 
vision of  Archbishop  Parker,  and  this,  in 
Queen  Elizabeth's  reign,  was  the  one 
put  in  the  churches.  Another  was  made 
during  Queen  Mary's  reign,  and  as  no  such 
work  would  then  have  been  allowed  in 
England,  it  was  done  at  Geneva,  by  some 
of  the  English  Protestants  who  had  fled  from 
Mary's  persecution.  During  that  persecution 
there  was  a  great  destruction  of  Bibles  in 
England  ;  but  when  Mary  died,  and  Elizabeth 
came  to  the  throne,  the  fugitives  returned, 
and  brought  the  new  Version  with  them ; 
and  very  soon  it  became  extremely  popular, 
although  it  was  the  Bishops'  Bible  that  was 
put    in   the  churches   instead    of  the  Great 

•  ^  The  Comfortable  Words  in  the  Communion 
Sei*vice  are  not  from  any  Version.  They  are  an 
independent  translation,  probably  (says  Westcott) 
made  by  Cranmer.  The  Benedictus,  Magnificat, 
and  Nunc  Dimittis,  are  also  independent. 


Title-page  to  the  New  Testament  in  the 
"Great  Bible,"   1539. 

To  face  p.  108. 


REFORMATION  BIBLES       109 

Bible.  It  was  a  handy  book  in  size  ;  it  was 
cheap  in  price  ;  it  was  not  printed  in  the  old 
black  letters,  but  in  what  we  call  "  roman  '^ 
type — the  type  we  generally  use  now  ;  it  put 
in  "  italics  "  the  words  necessary  for  the  sense 
though  not  in  the  original ;  it  was  arranged 
in  verses,  following  the  plan  invented  by 
Stephen  (as  we  saw  in  last  chapter)  ;  and  it 
had  useful  notes  and  explanations.  It  was 
widely  circulated  in  England  and  Scotland, 
and  taught  thousands  the  word  of  God. 
Many  also  learned  much  from  the  Bishops' 
Bibles  which  for  safety  were  chained  in  the 
churches. 

The  last  of  these  various  Versions  was 
made  abroad,  but  for  the  English  Roman 
Catholics.  The  New  Testament  was  printed 
at  Rheims,  and  the  Old  at  Douay.  It  was 
not  made  from  the  Greek  and  the  Hebrew, 
but  from  the  Latin  Vulgate,  and  therefore 
could  not  be  so  accurate  as  some  I  have 
been  telling  you  of.  And  its  language  is 
sometimes  very  strange.  Thus  in  Heb.  xiii. 
16,  where  we  read  in  our  Bible,  "To  do 
good  and  to  communicate  forget  not,  for 
with  such  sacrifices  God  is  well  pleased,"  the 
Rheims  Version  has  "  Beneficience  and  com- 


no    THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

munication  do  not  forget,  for  with  such  hosts 
God  is  premerited."  In  i  Tim.  iv.  St.  Paul 
describes  some  who  would  "  depart  from  the 
faith"  as  *' forbidding  to  marry."  This  is 
exactly  what  the  Roman  Church  has  done, 
forbidding  the  clergy  to  marry  ;  so  it  would 
have  been  dangerous  for  a  Roman  Catholic 
Version  to  use  such  words,  and  therefore 
the  Rheims  New  Testament  translates  thus, 
"Disallowing  the  sacrament  of  marriage," 
because  the  Protestants  did  not  reckon  mar- 
riage as  one  of  the  sacraments.  But  we  got 
from  it  not  a  few  very  good  expressions,  par- 
ticularly, "  To  me  to  live  is  Christ,  and  to 
die  is  gain,"  St.  Paul's  beautiful  words  in 
his  Epistle  to  the  Philippians.  It  also  put 
"  charity  "  in  i  Cor.  xiii.,  whereas  Tyndale's 
Version,  and  the  Bishops'  Bible,  and  the 
Geneva  Bible,  and  others,  had  "  love  "  ;  so  our 
ow^n  Bible  got  "  charity  "  from  the  Roman 
Catholic  Version.  Here  are  some  verses  from 
that  beautiful  chapter,  as  they  appear  in  three 
of  the  Versions  I  have  mentioned  : — 

In  Matthew^s  Version  {which  copied  Tyndale) 

Love  sufFereth  long,  and  is  courteous.     Love 
envieth  not.     Love  doth  not  frowardly,  swoUeth 


REFORMATION  BIBLES       in 

not,  dealeth  not  dishonestly,  seeketh  not  her  own, 
is  not  provoked  to  anger,  thinketh  not  evil,  rejoiceth 
not  in  iniquity,  but  rejoiceth  in  the  truth  ;  suffereth 
all  things,  believeth  all  things,  hopeth  all  things, 
endureth  all  things.  Though  that  prophesying 
fail,  other  tongues  shall  cease,  or  knowledge  vanish 
away,  yet  love  falleth  never  away. 


In  the  Geneva   Versi 


on 


Love  suffereth  long  :  it  is  bountiful :  love  envieth 
not;  doth  not  boast  itself;  it  is  not  puffed  up;  it 
disdaineth  not ;  it  seeketh  not  her  own  things ;  it 
is  not  provoked  to  anger,  it  thinketh  not  evil ;  it 
rejoiceth  not  in  iniquity,  but  rejoiceth  in  the  truth. 
It  suffereth  all  things,  it  believeth  all  things,  it 
hopeth  all  things,  it  endureth  ail  things.  Love 
doth  never  fall  away,  though  that  prophesyings 
be  abolished,  or  the  tongues  cease,  or  knowledge 
vanish  away. 

In   the  Rheims   Fersion 

Charity  is  patient,  is  benign ;  charity  envieth 
not,  dealeth  not  perversely :  is  not  puffed  up,  is 
not  ambitious,  seeketh  not  her  own,  is  not  pro- 
voked to  anger,  thinketh  not  evil ;  rejoiceth  not 
upon  iniquity,  but  rejoiceth  with  the  truth ;  suf- 
fereth all  things,  believeth  all  things,  hopeth  all 
things,  beareth  all  things.  Charity  never  falleth 
away ;  whether  prophecies  shall  be  made  void, 
or  tongues  shall  cease,  or  knowledge  shall  be 
destroyed. 


112     THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

You  will  remember  that  when  we  talked 
about  the  Books  of  the  Old  Testament,  I 
mentioned  certain  books  which  were  written 
by  Jews  before  the  time  of  our  Lord,  but 
were  not  included  in  the  Jewish  "  Canon " 
of  Scripture,  and  which  are  usually  called 
the  Apocrypha.  Now  the  English  Versions 
I  have  been  mentioning  included  the  Apo- 
crypha.    How  was  that  ? 

In  the  early  days  of  the  Church,  before 
it  was  finally  settled  which  of  the  Christian 
writings  were  to  be  in  the  Canon  of  the 
New  Testament,  some  of  the  books  of  the 
Apocrypha,  which  v/ere  (like  the  Christian 
writings)  written  in  Greek,  used  to  be  read 
for  instruction  when  the  Christians  met 
for  worship.  But  the  most  learned  of  the 
Fathers  always  distinguished  them  carefully 
from  the  really  inspired  Books  of  the  Hebrew 
Canon.  Justin  Martyr,  who  quotes  much 
from  Scripture,  never  quotes  from  them. 
Eusebius  separates  them  from  the  rest. 
Athanasius  protests  against  their  being  reck- 
oned with  the  others  as  "  a  device  of  heretics." 
Cyril  of  Jerusalem,  in  his  Instructions  for 
young  Christians,  says,  "I  pray  you  read 
nothing  of  the  Apocryphal  Books."     Jerome 


REFORMATION  BIBLES        113 

did  not  include  them  in  his  great  Latin 
Bible,  the  Vulgate ;  but  they  were  added 
afterwards,  and  during  the  Middle  Ages  no 
distinction — or  scarcely  any — was  made  be- 
tween the  Canonical  and  the  Apocryphal 
books.  When  the  great  revival  of  Greek 
learning  came,  men  began  to  recognize  the 
difference ;  and  it  is  remarkable  that  some 
of  the  strongest  objections  to  the  Apocrypha 
being  reckoned  as  Scripture  came  from  dis- 
tinguished divines  of  the  Roman  Church. 
For  instance,  Cardinal  Cajetan,  who  was 
a  great  opponent  of  Luther,  said,  "The 
whole  Latin  Church  owes  much  to  Saint 
Jerome  on  account  of  his  separation  of  the 
canonical  from  the  uncanonical  books."  ^ 
Not  vmtil  1 546  was  there  ever  an  official  re- 
cognition of  the  Apocrypha  as  inspired  Scrip- 
ture. It  was  then  done  by  the  Council  of 
Trent,  a  Council  which  fixed  the  Church  of 
Rome  to  several  unscriptural  doctrines. 

The  Reformers  in  their  new  Versions 
did  not  drop  these  books  out  altogether,  but 
they  separated  them  from  the  rest,  just 
as  the   early  Fathers  had  done.     And   so   it 

^  All  this,  and  much  more  to  the  same  effect, 
will  be  found  in  Westcott's  book  on  the  Canon. 

H 


114    THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

came  to  pass  that  the  large  Bibles  in  our 
churches  include  them,  and  a  few  of  the 
Daily  Lessons  in  the  month  of  November 
are  taken  from  them.^  The  Sixth  Article 
of  the  Church  of  England  gives  a  list  of 
the  inspired  Books  of  the  Old  Testament 
according  to  the  Jewish  Canon,  and  then 
adds,  "And  the  other  Books  (as  Hierome 
saith)  2  the  Church  doth  read  for  example 
of  life  and  instruction  of  manners ;  but  yet 
doth  it  not  apply  them  to  establish  any 
doctrine."  It  is  therefore  best  for  these 
Books — some  of  which  are  really  profitable — 
to  be  printed  and  bound  separately,  and  for 
our  own  Bibles  to  have  those  Books  only 
which  the  Church  from  the  beginning  has 
accepted  as  Holy  Scripture. 

When  Queen  Elizabeth  died,  the  English 
people  had  three  Bibles  in  use,  the  Great,  the 
Bishops',  and  the  Geneva.  King  James  I. 
succeeded  her,  and  very  soon  it  was  arranged 
by  him  that  a  new  Version  should  be 
made,   which    all    could    use.       About   fifty 

1  There  were  many  more  Lessons  from  the 
Apocrypha  in  the  Old  Lectionary.  The  present 
Lectionary  dates  from  1871. 

2  "  Hierome  "  is  St.  Jerome. 


REFORMATION  BIBLES        115 

learned  men  were  chosen  to  do  the  work, 
and  they  accomplished  it  in  four  years. 
They  compared  many  of  the  Versions, 
ancient  and  modern,  of  which  I  have  told 
you :  the  Hebrew,  Syriac,  Latin  Vulgate, 
Spanish,  French,  Italian,  German,  and  also 
the  various  English  ones.  But  Tyndale's 
and  Coverdale's  Versions,  after  all,  were  the 
real  ancestors  of  King  James's  Bible.  The 
new  Version,  which  appeared  in  161 1,  did 
not  win  favour  at  first.  One  great  scholar 
at  Cambridge  sent  a  message  to  King  James 
that  he  "  would  rather  be  rent  in  pieces 
with  wild  horses"  than  agree  to  its  use  in 
churches.  And  generally  the  people  pre- 
ferred the  Geneva.  But  gradually  it  came 
to  be  the  one  Bible  for  the  whole  nation  ; 
and  it  continues  so  to  this  day. 


CHAPTER  IX 

ABOUT    THE    AUTHORIZED    AND    THE 
REVISED    VERSIONS 

For  more  than  two  centuries  the  English 
people  had  only  one  Bible.  The  older 
Versions  were  not  reprinted,  and  gradually- 
ceased  to  be  used  ;  and  the  Version  made 
under  King  James's  direction  remained  the 
one  accepted  edition.  We  call  it  the  Autho- 
rized Version,  although  it  was  never  officially 
"authorized"  as  the  Great  Bible  of  Henry 
VIII.  had  been  ;  for  the  King's  Printers  and 
the  Universities  of  Oxford  and  Cambridge 
printed  no  other,  and  they  alone  have  had  the 
right  in  England  to  print  the  Scriptures  at  all. 
A  great  many  editions  of  the  Authorized  Ver- 
sion have  been  published  by  diiFerent  Societies, 
but  they  all  have  to  go  to  Oxford,  or  to 
Cambridge,  or  to  the  King's  Printers,  to 
get  them  printed.     This  is  what  is  called  a 

ii6 


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.Ml. 

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tlif  lbo:Oof  iDiftOoiiic ,  to  ■iiiotticf  the 
n)o;OofUiionilcDgc,m'tiKf.iiticfjiir;t. 

9  Co  atiotlicc faitli,  Dv tlic  fiimc fp. 
nc:toaiiotliortlictjifts  ofliMlmg,  liv 
theCmicfptnt: 

io  Co  aiiotlicrtlifHioiluiigofiicr.i 

fits,  tD.iiiotlicip;opl)ccit,  to  aiiotlKt 

Oiftcriuiig  of  fpints ,  to  aiiotlKi;  -'■<"<■■<• 

I  utiiDCEof  toiigxirs ,  to  aiiotlicr  rtic  ui;; 

tcrpict.woii  oftongiits.  ! 

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tii.iiiv  members, ,1110  .111  tlit  mciubrs  of 
tli.it  out  boDv,  being  iiiaui>  ,arc  one  bo 
Dic:ro.iliOi  Clinll.  j 

15  Joj  b)»oiicfpirit<irciwallbapti^ 
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bouDo!  ftcc:  .inoD.iuc  bccncalliiiaot 
tobiinkemtooiicfpirit. 
I    1+ Jroitljcbobvisnotoncmcmbct,; 
I  ibuttnanv. 

I  IS  Jf  the  foot  ni  -.11  f.ir ,  'oef.mff  J 
lamiiottDe  11.1110,3  iiiiiiiotoftljcboDp: 
'islttJiercfojenotoftIicbo6v<  ' 

1  16  ^iiDiftliefaren).iiif<iv,  Sttauft' 
ji  am  not  tlie  eve ,  31  iini  not  of  tilt  bo- 
ot': !Sit  tliccefo:e  not  of  tlic  booy; 

17  3Ff  tlic  miiole  boD)'  votrc  an  c>'e, 
lDl)ercl\)crttl)Cliearnig;5ftl)cUi|)olc 
xont  Ijcatmg ,  iDljcrc  Wicre  tijt  finds 
imgi 

IS  iSut  iioUi  !)atii  COD  fct  tlic  nittii' 
brrs.eucn'oneof  tliemmtfjcboD!',  as 
ittiattipleiifeDUini.  | 

;  19  3liiDifttiev\bcrc.illontjncinbcr,l 
Milicrciberetliebobv;  j 

10  2out  noil)  arc  tlici'  many  nient^' 
berS.vctbutoncboDv.  i 

:  I  StiD  the  eye  e.iniiot  f.w  Unto  tf)e 
li.ino ,  J/  li.iHC  no  nee D  of  tike :  no!  a^ 
g.imt,tlielie.iDtothefectr,'3  Ijiiuc  no 
neetirofvon.  I 

i  ji  /5.iv,imitIimojet!iofcmcnibctS| 
of tlic  boQit  mintU fcciiic  to  bccniozc I 
fccblcartntcciT.in'.  j 

25  auotliofc  "  v.-  of ttiebooic,! 
iW)ith\litt  t;};iiUe  to  bee  leCTc  lionouca- 
blc ,  Upon  tliffc  >Dc '  bcftolli  iiioze  abuti' : 
oa!itl)onouc,aiiDoi;rbiKoinclj)  parts 


liaueinojcabiiiir . 
t     :.)  fo;  our  coin.:.  , ,  ,;  r.o, 

iieei):OiitCotiliatUtcmpcicou;a.oc.:fl 
togetlif r  li,in.nggiutniiiojraUiniii,v\i ; 
I  lionmir  to  fli.it  part  ifiliitlil.itliet): 
I  2s  uliattiiciTilmulDbcno  ftlitfiiie, ; 
'  the  boDi' :  but  ili.u  the  nieiiil-cis  llioiilu 
liaiie  the  fame  tare  one  foMiiother. 

1',  ?inD  il)h.tlier  one  inniibcv  fnf ' 
fee,  all  the  niemLiers  fiiiTii  iiuttiii :  c; 
one  meniber  be  honoured, alt ilieiiieiii ; 
bcrsreioiw  Until  It.  i 

17  .fioTOveearcthe  boM'of  Cii'ift.j 
ano  mcmbc  re  111  partitn  lar.  ' 

5S  3JnD  OoD  hati)  fct  fonic  m  tiie 
Ciinith,  ficd  Jtpomcs,  fefoiiD.irilr 
02ophets,thiroii'Ceathers,afrerthat| 
iiiir.uieE.thcii  ff.ftsof  healings,  liclpcsii 
ingoueviimcis.  Diiierfities  of  tongues. 
i9  31rcaU?lpofllesMreailp;ophetr;' 
arc  .111  iCeathersi  areaii;iUio;lierGof  'o,., 
miMtlcs; 

50  iiimeaiitliegiftsoflicalingiDoc 
allfpcaucUiul)  tongues  <  Doe  all  intcr- 
pjtti 

5 1 2Sut  tottctearnemj'tht bcft gifts : 
anDvtt  fl)cU)  Jbutoyol!alllo^terfrl' 
Icntlbap. 

CHA1\    Xlll. 

1  A'Igiiics,  2.  5  llo-.vcx.cll;:il(;>-rlI-.r,r!..no- 
rliin^'.voulluiiliuuljijiiiiir.  4  TbcprailK 
tiicroJUiid  T!  prcljtion  b;lorchopcS:ljiih. 

ci^onghjTfpeaficibitljthe 

<  tongues  of  mm  f  of  Tin: 

„J  Bcls.aiioiianenottliann', 

^  II'inibeconu.iGrouiiOtim 

r^  b;a- 


«i(reo2atLiililmgt);nit.il 

3111D  though  3  h.itic  the  gift  of 
pjophcficaiii)  butierftanD  ,111  myttctiC0 
.iiiD  all  huoUilebge:  .iiiD  though  J 
tKweall  faith,  fo  iliatj  coum  tcmooiir 
monntamcs,  aiiD  Ijauc  no  tlmntie,  j 
amnotlmig. 

3  5lnD  thougli  5  bcflollie  all  niv 
gooDs  to  fecDe  the  poo:c,aiiD  though  j 
giucmvboovtobeebiirucD,  .iiiD  Dane 
notth.irme,itp2ofttctl)iiienot!i!ng.      i 

4.  Clwritic  fuffercth  long,>inDis 
ftmbe:  cliannc  ttiuietl)  not :  thantitl 
1  Daimtnh  not  it  fclfe,is  not  puff  eo  Dp,  ; 

5  Doethnotbelj.i«titfclfebnfecm 
If,  fecuethnothcroume,  is  not  cafilv. 
pionolieD.tliiii'.iethuocuilI,  j 

6  Kcioitrtli  not  in  muiuitic,biitrc-| 
loytethi'mtlietrnctli:  1 

7  iSeareth  all  things,  belrcnrtUalL 
tl«ugs,Oopet!)  all  tijmgs ,  ciumtct!)  am 
tilings. 

i3  S  £1)34 


Page  from  the  First  Edition  of  King  James' 
Bible  (the  "Authorized  Version"),  i6ii. 


To  face  p.   ii6. 


A.V.  AND  R.V.  117 

"  monopoly."  It  is  a  good  law,  because  we 
can  be  sure  that  those  three  presses  will 
print  accurately ;  and  it  is  most  important 
that  not  a  letter,  nor  a  comma,  in  our 
Bibles  should  be  wrong. 

This  Authorized  Version,  as  we  still  call 
it  for  convenience,  is  the  greatest  book  in 
the  English  language.  Its  words  are  the 
property  of  us  all,  and  many  of  its  expressions 
are  constantly  used  by  people  who  care  little 
or  nothing  for  it.  If  by  some  strange  miracle 
every  copy  of  it  in  the  world  were  suddenly 
to  disappear,  almost  the  whole  of  it  could 
quickly  be  printed  again  ;  for,  first  of  all, 
thousands  of  people,  young  and  old,  can 
repeat  many  of  the  chapters,  and  secondly, 
there  are  thousands  of  books  in  which  pas- 
sages are  quoted — passages  from  every  part 
of  it.  For  it  is  the  most  precious  posses- 
sion of  English  Christendom  ;  and  precious 
indeed  to  multitudes  of  individual  souls.  It 
has  been  their  comfort  and  strength  through 
life  ;  it  has  been  their  hope  and  stay  in  the 
hour  of  death. 

And  yet  it  is  not  perfect.  How  could 
any  translation  of  a  book  be  perfect  ?  Our 
Bible,    after   all,    is   only    a    translation    into 


ii8     THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

English  of  the  Hebrew  and  Greek  sentences 
which  the  writers  of  the  Scriptures  wrote 
down  ;  and  no  two  languages  ever  corre- 
spond exactly.  We  are  sure  that  God 
graciously  guided  those  good  and  learned 
men  in  King  James's  time  to  do  their  very 
best ;  and  wonderfully  indeed  has  He  blessed 
their  work.  But  in  after  years  men  began 
to  see  the  imperfections  of  the  Version,  and 
to  feel  that  it  is  our  bounden  duty  to  get 
God's  holy  Word  in  our  own  language  as 
perfectly  as  possible ;  and  many  editions 
were  published  with  notes  and  commen- 
taries, which  explained  to  the  reader  the 
little  changes  that  ought  to  be  made  here 
and  there.  These  were  generally  of  three 
kinds,  (i)  It  was  possible  in  many  places 
to  translate  the  Hebrew  and  the  Greek 
better.  (2)  King  James's  translators  had  not 
had  what  we  now  know  to  be  the  three 
oldest  Manuscripts,  which  I  mentioned  in 
Chapter  V.  ;  so  they  had  not  the  Greek  itself 
quite  correctly.  (3)  Some  of  the  English 
words  used  had  come  to  have  a  different 
meaning  in  the  course  of  years ;  as,  for 
example,  ^^preventy^  which  used  to  mean 
"  go   before  " — as  in   our   Collect,  "  Prevent 


A.V.  AND  R.V.  119 

us,  O  Lord,  in  all  our  doings," — but  has  come 
to  mean  *^ hinder";  or  again,  "carriage," 
which  used  to  mean  "  baggage,"  and  now 
only  means  a  vehicle.  When  David,  in 
I  Sam.  xvii.  22,  "left  his  carriage,"  it  only- 
means  perhaps  a  small  bag  and  water-bottle  ! 
See  also  the  case  of  St.  Paul,  Acts  xxi.  15. 

At  last,  in  1870,  under  Queen  Victoria, 
about  260  years  after  the  first  issue  of  King 
James's  Bible,  it  was  resolved  by  our  Bishops 
and  learned  men  to  make  a  Revised  Version. 
Not  altogether  a  new  one.  They  were 
anxious  not  to  change,  more  than  was  neces- 
sary, the  words  we  had  all  come  to  love  so 
much.  At  the  same  time  they  were  to 
make  corrections  of  the  three  kinds  I  have 
just  mentioned,  in  order  to  let  everybody 
understand  more  exactly  what  the  original 
Scriptures  really  say.  Accordingly,  thirty- 
four  very  learned  men  were  chosen,  English 
bishops  and  clergymen,  and  Nonconformist 
ministers,  and  Scotch  Presbyterians,  nineteen 
for  the  New  Testament  and  fifteen  for  the 
Old.  Among  them  were  men  like  Dr. 
Westcott  (afterwards  Bishop  of  Durham)  and 
Dr.  Hort  and  Dr.  Scrivener,  who  knew 
more  about   the  Greek  MSS.  than   anybody 


120    THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

else ;  and  men  who  had  written  splendid 
commentaries,  like  Dr.  Lightfoot  (also  after- 
wards Bishop  of  Durham)  and  Dr.  Perowne 
(afterwards  Bishop  of  Worcester)  and  Dr. 
Alford  and  Dr.  Plumptre ;  and  among 
others,  Dr.  Angus,  a  Baptist  minister,  who 
had  written  the  best  of  all  Bible  Handbooks.^ 
The  Bishop  of  Gloucester  (Dr.  Ellicott)  was 
chairman  of  the  New  Testament  Company, 
and  the  Bishop  of  Bath  and  Wells  (Lord 
Arthur  Hervey)  of  the  Old.  At  the  same 
time,  another  company  of  Revisers  was 
formed  in  America  ;  and  they  gave  valuable 
help.  It  was  agreed  that  no  change  should 
be  adopted  unless  at  least  two-thirds  of  the 
Revisers  approved.  Thus  if  twelve  of  the 
nineteen  New  Testament  Revisers  wanted 
to  make  a  change,  and  seven  did  not,  it 
was  not  made;  but  if  thirteen  wished  for 
it  and  six  did  not,  then  it  was  made.  This 
was  in  order  that  no  change  should  be  made 
unless  there  was  strong  reason  for  it. 

The  Revised  New  Testament  appeared  in 
1881,  and   the    Old    in    1885.     There   was 

1  An  admirable  new  edition  of  Angus's  Hand- 
book, edited  by  Dr.  S.  G.  Green,  has  been  issued 
by  the  Religious  Tract  Society. 


A.V.  AND  R.V.  121 

immense  excitement,  both  in  England  and 
in  America.  One  newspaper  sent  the  whole 
New  Testament  by  telegraph  from  New  York 
to  Chicago,  in  order  to  be  the  first  to  issue 
it  there  !  Then,  when  people  had  examined 
it  a  little,  there  was  a  great  outcry.  It  was 
a  shame,  many  said,  to  alter  the  words  of 
their  beloved  Bible.  One  great  scholar  at 
Oxford  declared  that  almost  all  the  correc- 
tions were  wrong.  He,  and  some  others, 
were  like  the  early  Latin  Christians  who  did 
not  like  Jerome's  Version  (see  Chap.  V.), 
and  also  were  like  the  Cambridge  scholar 
of  King  James's  day,  of  whom  I  told  you 
in  our  last  chapter,  who  said  he  would  rather 
be  torn  asunder  by  wild  horses  than  agree 
to  the  use  of  the  new  Version — that  very 
Version  which  was  now  so  old  and  had 
become  so  precious !  But  gradually,  most 
Bible-readers  have  come  to  value  the  Revised 
Version,  while  they  love  their  old  Bible  as 
dearly  as  ever. 

Let  me  now  give  you  some  illustrations 
of  the  corrections  made  in  the  Revised 
Version. 

I.  As  regards  changes  which  seemed  neces- 
sary   because    those    three    great    MSS. — or 


122     THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

two  of  them — showed  that  the  original 
Greek  was  not  quite  what  had  been  sup- 
posed, I  told  you  of  two  important  ones 
when  I  was  describing  those  MSS.  in  our 
fifth  chapter.  These  were  the  omission  of 
a  verse  in  the  ist  Epistle  of  St.  John,  and 
the  change  in  the  Angel's  Song  on  the 
night  of  our  Lord's  birth.  Among  others, 
there  is  a  verse  omitted  in  the  5th  chapter 
of  St.  John's  Gospel  (ver.  4),  and  a  verse 
in  Acts  viii.  (ver.  37).  Both  these  were 
very  likely  some  good  man's  notes  in  the 
margin,  which  a  copyist  put  into  the  text. 
There  are  several  changes  of  words  :  for  in- 
stance, on  the  last  page  of  the  Bible,  "they 
that  do  His  commandments"  is  changed 
into  "they  that  wash  their  robes"  (Rev. 
xxii.  14).  And  you  will  find  the  last 
twelve  verses  of  St.  Mark's  Gospel  separated 
from  the  rest,  because,  although  they  are  no 
doubt  part  of  God's  inspired  Scripture,  they 
seem  to  have  been  added  a  little  later. 

2.  As  regards  alterations  necessary  on 
account  of  old  English  words  having  changed 
their  meaning,  I  have  already  mentioned 
"  prevent "  and  "  carriage."  Another  is 
"  sometimes,"  which  used  to  mean  "  once," 


A.V.  AND  R.V.  123 

referring  to  past  times.  Thus,  in  Eph.  ii.  13, 
"  Ye  who  sometimes  were  far  off  are  made 
nigh  by  the  blood  of  Christ,"  the  word 
"  sometimes  "  does  not  mean  "  occasionally  *' 
or  "now  and  then."  The  meaning  is,  "ye 
that  once  were  far  off,"  that  is  formerly ; 
so  the  Revised  Version  puts  "  once."  Tyn- 
dale  had  "a  while  ago,"  which  is  good. 
Another  is  "  conversation."  We  usually  by 
that  word  mean  talking^  but  in  King  James's 
time  it  meant  our  whole  conduct  or  manner 
of  life,  which  is  what  the  Greek  word 
means ;  so  the  R.V.  in  several  places  has 
changed  it  accordingly.  Thus,  in  Gal.  i.  13, 
St.  Paul  says,  "  Ye  have  heard  of  my  con- 
versation," that  is  "  manner  of  life,"  and  so 
also  in  Eph.  iv.  22,  i  Tim.  iv.  12,  i  Pet.  i.  18, 
iii.  16.  In  Heb.  xiii.  7  the  R.V.,  instead 
of  "  end  of  their  conversation,"  gives  "  issue 
of  their  life."  In  Jas.  iii.  13,  for  "good 
conversation "  it  gives  "  good  life."  In 
I  Pet.  ii.  12,  iii.  i,  2,  it  gives  "  behaviour." 
In  I  Pet.  i.  15,  "manner  of  living."  In 
one  place,  Phil.  iii.  20,  the  Greek  word  is 
quite  different,  and  the  R.V.  has  correctly 
put  "citizenship";  "our  citizenship  is  in 
heaven."     There  are  many  other  like  cases. 


124    THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

3.  A  much  larger  number  of  corrections 
are  in  verses  where  there  is  no  difference  in 
the  Greek  MSS.,  and  no  need  for  altering 
an  English  word  because  it  has  a  different 
meaning  from  what  it  once  had  ;  but  where 
for  other  reasons  another  translation  would  be 
better.    I  will  give  you  some  examples  of  these. 

(a)  King  James's  learned  men  often  trans- 
lated the  same  Greek  word  by  different 
English  words.  They  did  so  on  purpose, 
saying  that  they  wished  a  great  many  English 
words  to  have  an  honourable  place  in  the 
English  Bible  which  might  not  have  got  in 
otherwise.  But  our  Revisers  thought  just 
the  other  way.  They  said  tliat  as  far  as 
possible  a  Greek  word  should  always  be  trans- 
lated by  the  same  English  word.  This  is 
sometimes  not  possible,  for  various  reasons ; 
and  sometimes  not  convenient,  as  you  saw 
just  now  about  "conversation."  And  often 
it  does  not  in  the  least  matter.  But  very 
often  it  does  matter.  For  example,  you 
know  how  the  Gospels  tell  us  about  "  two 
thieves  "  crucified  with  Jesus.  We  mean  by 
a  thief  a  man  who  steals  secretly  and  un- 
expectedly ;  and  when  Judas  Iscariot  is 
called    a     thief,    the     Greek    word    means 


A.V.  AND  R.V.  125 

exactly  that.  But  the  two  malefactors  on  the 
crosses  were  not  thieves  in  that  sense.  The 
Greek  word  there  means  "  robber,"  a  man 
who  comes  on  you  openly  and  violently. 
They  were  in  fact  like  Barabbas,  who  was 
a  "  robber  "  ;  and  very  likely  they  had  been 
with  him  in  his  insurrection,  wanting  to 
turn  out  the  Romans  and  "  restore  the 
kingdom  to  Israel."  So  the  penitent  robber 
begged  to  be  remembered  when  Jesus  came 
"in  His  Kingdom."  In  the  Parable  of  the 
Good  Samaritan,  too,  the  traveller  "  fell 
among  robbers,"  not  "  thieves."  Both  the 
words  are  used  together  when  our  Lord  in 
John  X.  speaks  of  "  thieves  and  robbers." 
The  Revised  Version  puts  them  always  in 
the  right  place.  Another  case  is  that  of  a 
word  used  forty  times  by  St.  Mark,  as  I 
mentioned  in  our  fourth  chapter.  In  our 
Bible  it  is  translated  by  four  English  words, 
"  straightway,"  "  immediately,"  "  forthwith," 
and  "anon."  But  if  you  read  St.  Mark  in 
the  R.V.,  you  will  always  find  "straightway," 
and  as  you  read  it  again  and  again  you  will 
say,  "  Ah  !  this  would  just  suit  Roman 
soldiers" — whom  I  think  (as  I  told  you  once 
before)  St.  Mark  often  had  in  his  mind  when 


126    THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

he  was  writing.  Once  more,  in  Rom.  iv. 
there  is  a  Greek  word  used  eleven  times. 
In  our  Bible  it  is  sometimes  "  reckon," 
sometimes  "  impute,"  sometimes  "  count." 
The  chapter  is  much  easier  to  understand 
in  the  R.V.,  which  always  puts  "  reckon." 

{h)  On  the  other  hand,  there  are  cases 
where  one  English  word  was  used  by 
King  James's  men  to  stand  for  two  or 
more  Greek  words,  and  where  the  Revised 
Version  tries  to  show  the  distinction.  Thus, 
in  John  x.  i6  Jesus  says,  "Other  sheep  I 
have  which  are  not  of  this  fold  .  .  .  there 
shall  be  one  fold  and  one  shepherd "  ;  but 
the  second  "fold"  should  be  "flock,"  the 
Greek  word  being  different.  Again,  in  the 
last  two  verses  of  St.  Matthew,  our  Bible 
has  "  teach  "  twice  :  "  teach  all  nations," 
and  "  teaching  them  to  observe."  Now 
the  first  "  teach  "  does  not  mean  "  instruct," 
but  "  make  disciples  " — "  Go  and  m.ake  dis- 
ciples of  all  the  nations."  Once  more,  in 
the  Revelation  we  find  a  dreadful  enemy 
of  God  and  man  called  "  the  beast,"  and 
we  also  find  "  four  beasts "  in  the  sacred 
company  round  the  Throne  ;  but  the  Greek 
words    are     quite     different.      The    former 


A.V.  AND  R.V.  127 

means  a  "  wild  beast,*'  while  the  latter 
only  means  a  "  living  creature."  In  these 
and  many  other  cases  like  them,  the  R.V. 
gives  us  the  true  meaning. 

(t)  Sometimes,  however,  it  has  not  been 
found  possible,  or  thought  well,  to  change 
the  words  we  are  so  used  to.  Thus,  there 
are  three  Greek  words  translated  "  world." 
One  does  mean  exactly  what  our  English 
word  "  world  "  means  ;  but  another  means 
"age"  or  long  period,  and  a  third  means 
"  inhabited  earth."  Thus  the  last  verse  of 
St.  Matthew's  Gospel  speaks  of  "  the  end 
of  the  world,"  where  the  Greek  means 
"  end  of  the  age^''  The  R.V.  does  not 
take  out  the  word  "world,"  but  it  explains 
the  meaning  in  the  margin.  Again  the 
word  "  hell "  stands  in  our  New  Testament 
for  two  words  in  the  Greek.  The  R.V. 
only  uses  it  for  one  of  these,  and  even 
there  it  puts  the  original  word  Gehenna  in 
the  margin.  For  the  other  it  puts  the 
original  word,  Hades^  into  the  text  itself. 
In  the  Old  Testament  there  is  only  one 
Hebrew  word  for  "  hell,"  Sheol,  and  the  R.V. 
puts  it  in  the  text  just  as  it  is,  instead  of  trans- 
lating it.     Both   Sheol  and   Hades  mean  the 


128     THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

unseen  world,  in  which  both  good  and  bad 
spirits  may  be  ;  but  Gehenna  means  a  place 
of  punishment.  Sometimes  you  will  find 
Sheol  in  the  R.V.,  where  our  Bible  has 
"  the  grave,"  particularly  in  the  Psalms  ; 
but  the  R.V.  sometimes  leaves  "the  grave" 
in,  as  when  Jacob  speaks  of  his  gray  hairs 
going  down  "  with  sorrow  to  the  grave  '* 
[Sheol  in  the  Hebrew). 

[d)  Some  of  the  Old  Testament  names 
appear  in  the  New  Testament  in  their  Greek 
form,  as  in  Luke  iv.,  where  "Elias"  and 
"Eliseus"  mean  Elijah  and  Elisha.  The 
most  important  case  is  where  "Jesus,"  the 
Greek  form,  stands  for  Joshua.  If  you  look 
at  Acts  vii.  45  and  Heb.  iv.  8,  you  will  see 
the  word  "Jesus,"  where  it  is  not  Christ 
that  is  referred  to,  but  Joshua.  In  the  pas- 
sage in  Acts,  Stephen  is  telling  how  the 
Israelites  took  the  tabernacle  into  Canaan 
when  they  conquered  the  land  :  "  which  our 
fathers  brought  in  with  Jesus,"  that  is,  of 
course,  Joshua.  And  in  Hebrews  we  read 
also  of  the  going  into  Canaan:  "If  Jesus 
had  given  them  rest,"  &c.,  where  plainly 
Joshua  is  meant.  The  R.V.  puts  this  right, 
and  many  other  names  too. 


A.V.  AND  R.V.  129 

(e)  In  many  places  we  can  understand 
much  better  what  exactly  is  meant  by  look- 
ing at  the  R.V.  Thus,  Herod  did  not 
murder  all  the  little  children  at  Bethlehem, 
but  only  the  boys,  the  "  male  children " 
(Matt.  ii.  16).  Again,  people  sometimes 
think  that  Peter's  address  in  the  temple,  in 
Acts  iii.,  brought  5000  persons  fnore  into  the 
Church,  because  our  Bible  (iv.  4)  says  "  the 
number  of  the  men  was  about  five  thousand  "  ; 
but  the  Greek  is  not  "  was,"  but  "  came  to 
be,"  meaning  that  the  3000  of  chap.  ii.  had 
grown  to  be  5000  altogether.  In  Acts  xix. 
37,  "  churches "  is  wrong,  as  the  meaning 
is  heathen  temples. 

(/)  Two  beautiful  changes  are  in  Phil.  iii. 
21,  where  "our  vile  body"  and  "His  glo- 
rious body  "  are  altered  to  "  the  body  of  our 
humiliation  "  and  "  the  body  of  His  glory  "  ; 
and  another  is  in  Col.  i.  13,  where  "His  dear 
Son  "  becomes  "  the  Son  of  His  love."  Look 
also  at  Luke  vii.  5,  where  "a  synagogue" 
becomes  "  our  synagogue  " — the  particular 
one  in  which  they  regularly  met  ;  and  Luke 
xxii.  56,  where  the  maid  saw  Peter  "as  he 
sat  in  the  light  of  the  y?r^,"  the  flames  reveal- 
ing  his   face.     One  very   important  change 

I 


130    THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

was  not  liked  by  many  at  first,  "love"  for 
"charity"  in  that  beautiful  chapter  the  13th 
of  I  St  Corinthians  ;  but  most  of  us  can  now 
see  that  it  was  right.  As  I  told  you  before, 
Tvndale*s  Version  and  others  had  "love," 
and  King  James's  translators  got  "  charity  " 
from  the  Roman  Catholic  Version. 

(g)  It  is  interesting  to  look  at  passages  like 
Mark  xii.  38,  39,  and  Luke  xx.  46,  47,  which 
record  the  same  words  of  our  Lord.  You 
will  see  that  in  our  Bibles,  although  the 
general  sense  is  the  same,  many  of  the  words 
are  quite  different.  But  in  the  Greek  they 
are  almost  exactly  alike ;  and  if  you  look 
at  the  R.V.,  you  will  see  the  same  thing, 
there  being  only  two  very  small  differences. 
Here  is  the  passage  : — 

St.   Mark— a. V. 

Beware  of  the  scribes,  which  love  to  go  in 
long  clothing,  and  love  salutations  in  the  market- 
places, and  the  chief  seats  in  the  synagogues,  and 
the  uppermost  rooms  at  feasts ;  which  devour 
widows'  houses,  and  for  a  pretence  make  long 
prayers ;  these  shall  receive  greater  damnation. 

St.   Luke — A.V. 

Beware  of  the  scribes,  which  desire  to  walk 
in  long  robes,  and  love  greetings  in  the  markets, 


A.V.  AND  R.V.  131 

and  the  highest  seats  in  the  synagogues,  and  the 
chief  rooms  at  feasts ;  which  devour  widows* 
houses,  and  for  a  shew  make  long  prayers ;  the 
same  shall  receive  greater  damnation. 

St.  Mark— R.V. 

Beware  of  the  scribes,  which  desire  to  walk 
in  long  robes,  and  to  have  salutations  in  the 
market-places,  and  chief  seats  in  the  synagogues, 
and  chief  places  at  feasts :  they  which  devour 
widows'  houses,  and  for  a  pretence  make  long 
prayers  ;  these  shall  receive  greater  condemnation. 

St.  Luke— R.V. 

[Same  as  St.  Mark,  except  giving  "love  saluta- 
tions "  instead  of  *'  to  have,"  and  omitting  "  they  " 
before  **  which  devour."  Both  changes  correspond 
to  differences  in  the  Greek.] 

(y)  The  illustrations  I  have  now  given 
you  are  all  (except  one)  from  the  New 
Testament.  There  are  not  so  many  small 
changes  in  the  Old  Testament ;  but  what  have 
been  made  are  important.  I  will  only  mention 
two.  The  Israelites  did  not  "  borrow  "  from 
the  Egyptians  (Exod.  xii.  35) ;  they  only 
"  asked  "  ;  and  the  Egyptians  gave  to  them 
freely.  In  Isa.  ix.  2  (one  of  our  Christmas 
Day  Lessons)  the  sense  is  spoilt  by  the  word 
"  not  '* ;  and  the  R.V.  leaves  it  out. 


132    THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

One  thing  more.  The  Revised  Version 
prints  the  Bible  in  paragraphs  like  other 
books,  except  the  Psalms  and  other  poetry ; 
but  it  puts  the  numbers  of  chapters  and 
verses  in  the  margin  to  help  us  in  looking 
them  out.i  This  helps  you  to  understand 
better  in  many  places.  Thus  the  first  three 
verses  of  Gen.  ii.  belong  to  chap.  i.  ;  the 
5th  and  6th  chapters  of  Joshua  ought  to 
run  on  without  break  ;  the  great  prophecy 
of  the  suffering  Messiah  in  Isaiah  liii.  really 
begins  at  ver.  13  of  the  previous  chapter; 
the  first  verse  of  i  Cor.  vii.  belongs  to  chap. 
vi.  ;  and  the  first  verse  of  Col.  iv.  to  chap.  iii. 

The  Revised  Version  is  not  perfect ;  but 
it  is  a  splendid  help  to  studying  God's  Word, 
and  we  should  thank  God  for  it. 

1  In  some  later  editions  of  the  R.V.  the  chapters 
and  verses  are  indicated  in  the  text. 


CHAPTER    X 

ABOUT    THE    MISSIONARY    VERSIONS 

All  the   Versions  of  the    Bible  which    we 

have    talked   about   so    far   were    made    for 

Christian  peoples  and  nations.     But  in  these 

latter  years  a  great  many  have  been  made  by 

missionaries  to  non-Christian  lands,  Heathen 

and    Mohammedan.     Let  me   now  tell  you 

something  about  them. 

The  earliest  of  these  Missionary  Versions 

was  made  for  the  people  we  call  Red  Indians. 

When  Columbus  sailed  across  the  Atlantic 

Ocean,  his    hope  was   to  find  a  way  round 

the   Globe    to   India.     Nobody   then    knew 

that   the    great    Continents    of    North   and 

South  America  blocked  the  way  !     And  so 

when  he  and  other  navigators  landed  in  the 

New  World,  and  found  natives  with  a  dark 

reddish  skin  living  in  the  dense  forests  that 

then  covered  the  country,  they  called  them 

133 


134    THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

Red  Indians^  though  they  had  really  nothing 
to  do  with  India.  Then,  when  English 
people  began  to  go  over  and  settle  there, 
some  good  men  among  them  tried  to  tell 
these  "  Indians "  about  the  true  God  and 
our  Lord  Jesus  Christ.  One  who  did  so 
was  named  John  Eliot,  and  he,  in  1663, 
translated  the  whole  Bible  into  one  of  the 
"Indian"  languages,  spoken  in  that  part  of 
the  country  where  the  great  city  of  Boston 
and  other  modern  towns  now  stand.  These 
languages  have  words  of  immense  length, 
which  made  his  task  a  difficult  one.  Here 
is  one  of  the  words,  meaning  a  catechism  : — 

KummogokdonattGOttammoctiteaongannunnonash» 

Those  tribes  have  long  since  died  out,  and 
the  great  American  people  dwelling  in  that 
vast  territory  of  course  speak  English  ;  and 
no  one  now  uses  Eliot's  Bible.  But  we 
may  be  sure  that  God  used  it  at  the  time. 

A  few  years  later,  in  1698,  a  Society  was 
formed  in  England  called  the  Society  for  Pro- 
moting Christian  Knowledge  (usually  called 
by  its  initials  "S.P.C.K.");  and  one  of  its 
objects  was  to  print  and  circulate  the  Bible, 
both    in    English    and     in    other    languages. 


THE  MISSIONARY  VERSIONS     135 

This  Society  took  a  great  interest  in  India, 
long  before  that  great  country  became  part 
of  the  British  dominions.  The  first  mission- 
aries to  go  there  were  two  Germans,  Ziegen- 
balg  and  Plutscho,  sent  by  the  King  of 
Denmark  in  1706,  when  the  S.P.C.K.  was 
eight  years  old  ;  but  presently  Denmark 
asked  England  to  help  the  Mission,  and  it 
was  the  S.P.C.K.  that  did  so.  Hearing  that 
Ziegenbalg  had  translated  the  New  Testa- 
ment into  Tamil,  one  of  the  great  Indian 
languages,  the  S.P.C.K.  very  wisely  sent  him 
a  printing-press  to  print  it.  Afterwards  the 
Society  took  over  a  large  part  of  the  Mission, 
and  for  many  years  supported  the  mission- 
aries ;  and  one  of  them,  Schultze,  who  was 
also  a  German,  completed  the  Tamil  Bible. 
Like  other  Versions  (as  we  have  seen),  this 
Version  needed  to  be  revised  ;  and  various 
editions  have  been  brought  out  since  then. 
It  is  now  used  by  many  Missions  in  South 
India  and  Ceylon  working  among  the  Tamil 
people  :  the  Society  for  the  Propagation  of 
the  Gospel  (S.P.G.),  the  Church  Missionary 
Society  (C.M.S.),  and  several  other  societies, 
English  Nonconformist,  American,  and  Ger- 
man.    It  has  told    thousands  and   thousands 


136    THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

of  idol -worshipping  Heathen  about  the  true 
God,  and  helped  to  bring  them  to  Jesus 
Christ.  It  is  now  read  in  hundreds  of  Tamil 
churches  and  thousands  of  Tamil  homes. 
The  Tamil  character  is  curious,  as  you  will 
see  : — 

vpsuek  ersiQ^  ^sueisr  Q^lLQu  QunsfruiS)  S^.^u.)(^e^'ceet 

Another  language  in  which  the  S.P.C.K. 
did  much  to  circulate  the  Scriptures  was 
Arabic.  This  is  one  of  the  most  important 
languages  in  the  world.  It  is  spoken,  not 
only  in  Arabia,  but  in  Syria  and  Palestine 
and  Egypt  and  other  Bible  lands,  and  in  a 
large  part  of  North  Africa ;  and  as  the 
Koran,  the  book  which  teaches  the  Moham- 
medan religion,  is  in  Arabic,  all  educated 
Mohammedans  learn  it.  An  Arabic  Version 
of  the  Bible  was  made  just  about  the  time 
when  the  S.P.C.K.  was  established ;  and 
the  Society  printed  10,000  copies  of  the 
New  Testament  of  this  Version  in  1727, 
most  of  which  went  to  Russia,  to  be  cir- 
culated amona:  the  Mohammedans  of  Central 


THE  MISSIONARY  VERSIONS      137 

Asia.  Since  then,  other  Versions  have  been 
made  and  printed,  the  American  Missionaries 
in  Syria  having  done  most  valuable  vv^ork  in 
this  vv^ay.  Here  is  St.  John  iii.  16  in  the 
Arabic  character  : — 

J^l  ja*;Jl  u^l  JIj  ^^  puJI  »-Ul  ,.,^1  ljX»  »j^ 


But  nearly  a  hundred  years  passed  away, 
after  the  S.P.C.K.,  and  also  the  S.P.G.,  began 
their  great  work,  before  Christian  people  in 
England  really  thought  and  cared  much  about 
the  Heathen  in  far-ofF  lands  who  knew  not 
God,  or  remembered  how  Jesus  Christ  had 
commanded  His  Church  to  go  and  teach  all 
nations.  One  of  the  first  men  whose  mind 
and  heart  became  full  of  this  great  duty  was 
a  very  humble  person,  a  cobbler  at  a  North- 
amptonshire village,  named  William  Carey. 
He  went  to  India  as  a  missionary  in  1793, 
and  became  in  time  a  very  learned  man,  with 
great  influence.  He,  and  others  with  him, 
started  a  printing-press  at  Serampore  in 
Bengal,  expressly  to  print  the  Bible.  Now 
India  is  a  large  country,  and  many  languages 


138     THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

are  spoken  in  difFerent  parts ;  and  Carey 
and  his  brethren  learned  several  of  them,  and 
made  versions  in  them  of  parts  of  the  Bible. 
Another  who  worked  hard  in  the  same  way- 
was  a  very  different  man,  a  good  scholar 
from  Cambridge,  named  Henry  Martyn. 
After  a  few  years  in  India,  where  he  trans- 
lated the  New  Testament  into  Hindustani, 
he  went  also  to  Persia,  and  made  a  version 
in  the  Persian  language.  He  died  on  his 
way  home,  while  still  a  young  man  ;  but 
his  letters  and  journals  were  published,  and 
very  many  people  have  been  led  by  reading 
them  to  devote  themselves  to  God's  service. 
I  hope  you  will  all  read  the  Life  of  Henry 
Martyn. 

It  was  soon  after  Carey  went  to  India, 
and  before  Martyn  went,  that  the  Church 
Missionary  Society  was  founded  (1799),  by 
a  number  of  good  clergymen  and  laymen 
who  thought  much  of  the  Heathen  nations 
in  Africa  and  Asia  and  the  Islands  of  the 
Sea,  to  whom  nobody  had  yet  gone  to  preach 
the  Gospel.  This  Society  was  five  years  old 
before  it  had  any  missionaries  to  send  out ; 
it  could  not  find  fit  persons  willing  to  go  ; 
but  the  good  men  who  directed  it  knew  the 


THE  MISSIONARY  VERSIONS     139 

importance  of  getting  on  with  the  preparation 
of  Versions  of  the  Scriptures,  and  they  began 
their  work  meanwhile  in  that  way.  In  after 
years  its  missionaries  in  different  parts  of  the 
world  had  a  large  share  in  translating  the 
Bible  ;  and  it  educated,  and  employed  for 
some  years  in  linguistic  work,  a  remarkable 
young  man  named  Samuel  Lee,  originally  a 
carpenter  at  Shrewsbury.  He  was  called 
"the  Society's  Orientalist,"  because  he 
worked  much  in  Oriental  (Eastern)  lan- 
guages ;  and  he  afterwards  became  Professor 
of  Arabic  at  Cambridge  University. 

But  the  greatest  step  towards  making  the 
Bible  a  book  for  all  people  at  home  and  all 
nations  abroad  was  taken  in  1804,  when 
good  men  of  both  the  Church  of  England  and 
various  Protestant  denominations  united  to 
form  the  British  and  Foreign  Bible  Society. 
Its  very  first  publication  was  St.  John's  Gospel 
in  Mohawk,  one  of  the  Red  Indian  languages. 
But  its  earlier  years  were  much  occupied 
with  printing  and  circulating  the  English 
Bible;  for  in  those  days  Bibles  were  still  dear, 
and  in  thousands  of  homes  no  copy  was  to  be 
found,  notwithstanding  all  the  good  work  of 
the  S.P.C.K.  for  over  a  hundred  years.     Also 


140    THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

it  was  printing  the  Scriptures  in  the  Welsh 
language,  and  in  Gaelic  for  the  Scotch  High- 
landers, and  in  Erse  for  the  poorer  Irish  ; 
but  the  Scotch  and  Irish  work  was  soon 
taken  up  by  other  Societies  established  at 
Edinburgh  and  Dublin.  Also  the  Bible 
Society  was  doing  much  to  provide  the 
Scriptures  for  the  Continent  of  Europe, 
printing  them  in  French  and  German  and 
Russian  and  many  other  languages.  So 
while  all  this  was  being  done,  there  was 
not  much  time  or  money  for  Heathen  and 
Mohammedan  countries  ;  and  for  some  years 
the  Missionary  Societies  went  on  with  the 
Bible  work  which  they  had  begun.  For 
instance,  the  Church  Missionary  Society  set 
up  a  printing-press  at  Malta,  which  was 
managed  by  John  Kitto,  who  afterwards 
wrote  many  useful  books  to  help  us  in  study- 
ing the  Bible  ;  and  he  and  a  learned  German 
named  Schlienz  printed  hundreds  of  thousands 
of  portions  of  Scripture  in  Arabic  and  Turkish 
and  other  Eastern  languages.  But  gradually 
it  came  to  pass  that  the  Bible  Society  took 
over  almost  the  whole  of  the  work,  and  the 
Missionary  Societies   have  been  glad   indeed 


THE  MISSIONARY  VERSIONS     141 

to  be  thus  relieved  and  helped.  There  is  in 
fact  a  kind  of  partnership  between  them. 
It  is  the  missionaries  who  make  the  Versions, 
or  revise  them  ;  but  when  the  Version  is 
written  out,  it  is  sent  to  the  Bible  Society, 
and  the  Bible  Society  prints  it,  and  then 
supplies  the  copies.  Moreover,  the  Bible 
Society  sometimes  supports  the  missionaries 
during  the  time  they  are  engaged  in  such  a 
work,  and  pays  other  expenses  incurred. 
Certainly  it  is  a  true  saying  that  the 
Missionary  Societies  cannot  do  without  the 
Bible  Society  ;  and  it  is  equally  true  that 
the  Bible  Society  cannot  do  without  the 
Missionary  Societies. 

One  of  the  early  Foreign  Versions 
printed  by  the  Bible  Society  has  a  curious 
history.  In  Abyssinia  there  is  an  ancient 
Christian  Church  ;  and  one  of  the  Versions 
made  in  ancient  times  was  in  Ethiopic,  the 
language  of  that  country.  But  in  after  ages 
the  mother-tongue  of  the  people  came  to  be 
Amharic,  and  Ethiopic  was  only  known  by 
those  who  learned  it,  like  Latin  and  Greek 
with  us ;  so  in  modern  times  the  people 
could  not  read  their  own  Scriptures.     Now 


142    THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

about  a  hundred  years  ago  there  was  in 
Egypt  an  old  Abyssinian  monk  named  Abu 
Rumi,  whose  life  had  been  saved  by  the 
French  Consul  there,  who  I  suppose  was  a 
Roman  Catholic.  That  Consul  employed 
the  old  man  to  make  a  translation  of  the 
ancient  Ethiopic  Version  into  the  Amharic, 
spoken  by  the  Abyssinian  people.  Every 
week  for  ten  years  they  sat  together  for 
two  days  at  the  work,  comparing  with  the 
Ethiopic  Version  the  original  Hebrew,  and 
the  Syriac,  and  the  Arabic  ;  and  the  Amharic 
Version  they  produced  occupied  9539  pages  ! 
— all  written  out  by  the  old  monk.  Just  at 
that  time  the  Church  Missionary  Society  had 
sent  to  the  East  a  clergyman  named  Jowett, 
a  Fellow  of  St.  John's  College,  Cambridge. 
He  saw  how  important  this  new  Version 
might  be  for  Abyssinia;  and  he,  in  1820, 
purchased  Abu  Rumi's  manuscript  for  ^1250, 
for  the  Bible  Society.  A  great  many  copies 
were  sold  in  Abyssinia  by  C.M.S.  missionaries 
there.  One  of  these  was  Samuel  Gobat,  who 
was  afterwards  Bishop  of  the  Church  of 
England  at  Jerusalem ;  and  another  was 
Johann  Ludwig  Krapf,  the  first   great  mis- 


THE  MISSIONARY  VERSIONS     143 

sionary  traveller  in  Eastern  Africa.  Sixty 
years  later,  that  same  Krapf,  in  his  old 
age,  was  employed  by  the  Bible  Society  to 
revise  the  Version  ;  and  it  was  completed  in 
1879  at  a  missionary  press  at  St.  Chrischona, 
near  Basle,  in  Switzerland.  Here  is  St.  John 
iii.  16  in  the  Amharic  character  : — 


JOOI    .    u^tf   :    Xl^^imct    :    PHAA9<» 


But  of  course  the  Versions  for  the  great 
Asiatic  nations  were  more  important  than 
this  one.  Carey  and  his  Baptist  brethren 
at  Serampore  in  Bengal  made  the  first  Ver- 
sions for  India  (except  the  Tamil  one  be- 
fore mentioned).  Then  Bible  Societies  were 
established  at  Calcutta,  Madras,  and  other 
great  Indian  cities,  which  were  helped  by 
large  grants  of  money  from  the  Bible 
Society  at  home,  and  produced  many  edi- 
tions, both  new  and  revised,  in  various 
Indian  languages.  China  had  had  the  Scrip- 
tures  ages   ago,    from    missionaries   sent    by 


144    THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

the  Church  in  Syria;  but  the  Version  had 
perished.  So  also  had  a  Mongolian  Version 
of  the  New  Testament  made  in  the  Middle 
Ages  by  a  famous  Roman  Catholic  missionary 
named  John  de  Monte  Corvino.  But  just 
about  the  time  that  the  Church  Missionary 
Society  was  founded,  a  manuscript  was 
found  in  the  British  Museum  which  had 
been  brought  from  China,  and  contained 
a  Chinese  Version  of  parts  of  the  New 
Testament.  When  another  Society,  the 
London  Missionary  Society,  sent  out  the 
first  English  missionary  to  China,  Robert 
Morrison,  he  took  a  copy  of  this  Version 
with  him  ;  and  it  helped  him  in  preparing 
the  Chinese  Bible,  which,  after  ten  years 
of  hard  study  and  labour,  he  and  his  friend 
Milne  produced.  It  was  Milne  who  said 
that  to  learn  Chinese  required  "  bodies  of 
brass,  lungs  of  steel,  heads  of  oak,  hands 
of  spring-steel,  eyes  of  eagles,  hearts  of 
apostles,  memories  of  angels,  and  lives  of 
Methuselah  "  ! 

There  are  many  languages  and  dialects 
spoken  in  China,  but  there  is  only  one 
written  language.  If  the  Emperor  publishes 
a    proclamation,    it    can    be    posted    up    all 


THE  MISSIONARY  VERSIONS     145 

over  China  and  be  understood  by  all  the 
people  who  can  read  ;  yet  if  two  men 
from  different  provinces  read  it  aloud, 
neither  will  understand  the  other.  Does  this 
seem  strange  ?  Well,  think  of  our  figures 
in  arithmetic,  which  we  call  "  Arabic  nume- 
rals," I,  2,  3,  4,  5,  6,  7,  8,  9.  They  are  under- 
stood all  over  Europe  by  those  whose  eyes 
see  them  ;  but  different  nations  express  them 
differently  to  the  ear.  An  Englishman  says 
"  one,  two,  three,  four "  ;  a  Frenchman, 
"  un,  deux,  trois,  quatre  "  ;  a  German,  "  ein, 
zwei,  drei,  vier."  Well,  the  written  lan- 
guage in  China  is  something  like  those 
Arabic  figures :  men  from  different  pro- 
vinces can  all  read  it,  and  it  means  the 
same  thing  to  them  all  ;  but  when  they 
speak  their  words  are  different.  Parts  of 
the  Bible  are  now  provided  in  many  of 
the  local  dialects,  printed  in  our  "  roman  *' 
letters,  which  are  really  easier  for  the  poorer 
Chinese  to  learn  than  their  own  characters ; 
and  a  remarkable  Scotchman  named  Murray 
has  invented  a  system  which  blind  men  in 
China — there  are  a  great  many  of  them  ! 
— can  learn  easily  and  then  read  to  others. 
Here   is   St.   John    iii.    16    in    the    Foochow 

K 


146    THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

dialect,   both   in    Chinese   characters  and   in 
roman  letters  : — 


fi    ff    m.   m 

i^>  p  m  m  ± 

#  s  itt,  1^  f* 

M  IK  i>x  m  m 

^,  m  B  ^  ^ 

%  )i  ^  ^ 

In  roman  letters 

Ing  Siong-Da  gik  tiang  sie-gang,  seu  duk-seng 
gi  Cu  gaung-sie,  T-de  huing  neng  seng  I  a 
mieng  ting-lung,  daik  ing-seng. 

I  told  you  before  of  that  strange  Red 
Indian  language  with  the  long  words.  Al- 
though all  the  tribes  scattered  over  North 
America  would  scarcely  people  one  large 
Chinese  city,  they  have  many  languages  and 
dialects  ;  and  it  has  been  a  hard  task  to  give 
them  the  Scriptures  in  so  many  Versions. 
Yet  some  of  them  have  the  whole  Bible, 
and    others   have   large    parts   of  it.      Even 


THE  MISSIONARY  VERSIONS     147 

among  the  Eskimo  people,  on  the  shores 
of  the  Arctic  Ocean,  many  have  learned  to 
read,  and  have  the  Word  of  God  in  their 
own  language  in  their  hands.  For  some 
of  these  tribes  a  kind  of  alphabet  (a  "  syl- 
labic" system)  w^as  invented,  u^hich  they 
can  learn  in  a  few  days ;  and  large  parts 
of  Scripture  have  been  printed  in  those 
simple  characters.  Here  is  St.  John  iii.  16 
in  Eskimo,  in  both  the  syllabic  character  and 
in  roman  letters  :  ^ — 

)crj)j,    Aj,<i.n'>    o\Ab3-     (:<^j^L    <Vc>c/a.r^ 

In  roman  letters 

Taimik  Gudib  sillaksoarmiut  nssgligiveit, 
Ernetuane  tunnilugo,  illunatik  okpertut  tap- 
somunga,  assiokonnagit  nungusuitomigle  in- 
nogutekarkovlugit. 

It  has  also  cost  great  labour  to  supply 
the  many  tribes  of  the  South  Sea  Islands,  in 
Polynesia,  and  Melanesia,  and  New  Zealand. 

^  The  syllabic  character  is  used  for  the  Eskimo 
of  Baffin's  land.  For  the  Eskimo  of  Greenland 
and  Labrador  the  roman  type  is  used. 


148    THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

And  then  there  is  the  great  Dark  Conti- 
nent of  Africa  !  The  whole  Bible  is  pub- 
lished in  fourteen  African  languages  besides 
the  Amharic  and  Arabic  which  I  mentioned 
before,  and  the  New  Testament  in  twenty- 
six  more  ;  and  smaller  portions  in  over  eighty 
others.  What  a  work  it  has  been  !  In 
South  Africa  the  great  missionary,  Robert 
MofFat,  translated  the  whole  Bible  into  the 
language  of  the  Bechuana  people.  I  once 
heard  that  fine  old  veteran  speak  at  a  great 
meeting  in  London,  and  I  remember  how 
in  the  middle  of  his  speech  he  stopped  short 
and  seemed  unable  to  get  on.  Presently 
he  said,  "  Dear  friends,  do  forgive  me ;  I 
am  thinking  in  Bechuana^  and  translating  my 
thoughts  into  English  as  I  go  along  ;  and  I 
cannot  remember  what  the  English  word 
is  for  a  Bechuana  word  which  I  have  in 
my  mind !  "  You  see  he  had  been  so  long 
in  Africa  (over  fifty  years)  that  the  language 
he  had  learned  to  speak  there  had  become 
almost  a  mother-tongue  to  him.  In  West 
Africa  a  large  part  of  the  translation  of  the 
Bible  into  the  Yoruba  language  was  done 
by  Bishop  Samuel  Crowther,  the  Negro  who 
had   been   a   slave-boy,   and    who  afterwards 


THE  MISSIONARY  VERSIONS     149 

became  the  first  black  Bishop.  Here  is  St. 
John  iii.   16  in  Yoruba  : — 

Nitori  ti  Olorun  fe  araiye  tobe  ge,  ti  o  fi  Omo 
bibi  re  nikansoso  fun  ni  pe,  enikeni  ti  o  ba 
gba  a  gbd  ki  yio  segbe,  sugbon  yio  ni  lye  ti 
ko  nipekun. 

In  East  Africa  it  was  an  English  Bishop, 
Dr.  Steere,  who  made  the  Version  in  Swahili, 
the  most  important  language  on  that  coast ; 
and  in  Uganda,  one  of  the  latest  and  most 
fruitful  mission-fields,  it  was  chiefly  done  by 
two  laymen.  Alexander  Mackay,  a  clever 
young  Scotchman,  made  the  first  attempt  to 
put  St.  Matthew's  Gospel  into  Luganda  (as 
the  language  is  called),  and  printed  it  on  the 
spot  with  his  own  hands  ;  and  the  greater 
part  of  the  whole  Bible  was  done  by  George 
Pilkington,  a  classical  scholar  from  Cambridge. 
Here  is  St.  John  iii.  16  in  Luganda  : — 

Kubanga  Katonda  bweyayagala  ensi  bwati, 
nokuwayo  nawayo  Omwanawe  eyazalibwa 
omu  yeka,  buli  munlu  zena  amukirisa  alemc 
okubula,  naye  abere  nobulamu  obutagwawo. 

These  Versions,  and  many  other  African 
ones,  are  printed  and  supplied  by  the  Bible 
Society. 


150    THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

While  the  British  and  Foreign  Bible  Society 
has  had  the  largest  share  in  supplying  the 
Word  of  God  in  many  languages,  the  S.P.C.K. 
and  the  Scotch  Society  have  continued  their 
good  work.  The  American  Bible  Society 
also  has  rendered  noble  service.  It  has  been 
the  chief  agent  for  Bible  revision  and  cir- 
culation in  the  Turkish  Empire ;  it  has 
taken  its  part  in  the  Chinese  Versions; 
it  has  been  the  leader  in  producing  the 
Japanese  Bible.  Of  the  three  authors  of  the 
Japanese  Version,  Hepburn,  Verbeck,  and 
Fyson,  the  first  tv\^o  v^^ere  distinguished 
American  missionaries,  while  the  third  (now 
one  of  the  Bishops  in  Japan)  belongs  to  the 
C.M.S.  The  work  occupied  sixteen  years, 
and  the  complete  Version  was  solemnly  pre- 
sented, "  from  the  whole  Church  of  Christ 
in  America  and  England  to  the  Japanese 
nation,"  at  a  great  public  meeting  at  Tokyo 
in  1888.  In  1898  the  Japanese  Christians 
united  to  present  a  splendidly  bound  copy 
to  the  Emperor. 

Altogether,  the  Holy  Scriptures,  in  whole 
or  in  part,  have  been  translated  into  about 
500   languages.       Of   these    Versions,   about 


THE  MISSIONARY  VERSIONS     151 

120  are  of  the  whole  Bible,  and  about  130 
more  of  the  whole  New  Testament  (with 
parts  of  the  Old).  What  an  amount  of 
patient  and  prayerful  labour  must  have  been 
expended  to  achieve  such  a  result ! 

I  want  you  now  to  consider  the  exceed- 
ing difficulty  of  much  of  this  work  of  Bible 
translation.  It  is  not  easy  even  when  the 
languages  are  well  known,  spoken  by  civi- 
lized peoples,  and  written  down  long  ago,  so 
that  there  are  grammars  and  dictionaries ; 
such  as  Arabic,  Persian,  Chinese,  and  the 
greater  languages  of  India,  like  Hindi  and 
Bengali  and  Tamil.  But  the  difficulty  is  far 
greater  in  uncivilized  countries,  where  the 
languages,  though  spoken,  have  never  been 
written  down,  and  the  people  have  no 
written  letters  or  characters  at  all,  and  there 
are  of  course  no  grammars  or  dictionaries. 
You  learn  French  and  German  easily  enough  ; 
but  what  would  you  do  if  you  were  put 
down  in  a  French  village,  without  any 
French  book  or  help  of  any  kind,  and  told 
to  learn  French  ?  Many  missionaries  have 
been  in  positions  like  that.  They  have  had 
to   pick   up   the    language    gradually   by   the 


152     THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

ear  only.  But  just  think  what  it  must  be  ! 
You  h'sten  to  a  native  speaking  ;  he  seems 
to  jabber  very  fast ;  you  can't  tell  where  one 
word  ends  and  another  begins  ;  and  even 
when  you  can  separate  them,  how  are  you 
to  tell  which  is  a  noun  and  which  an  adjec- 
tive and  which  a  verb  and  which  a  preposi- 
tion ?  No  doubt  in  time  you  will  manage 
to  catch  simple  words  like  "  man  "  and 
"  woman,"  and  "  sleep  "  and  "  wake,"  and 
"day"  and  "night,"  and  "sun"  and  "sea," 
and  "go"  and  "come,"  and  "eat"  and 
"drink."  But  that  goes  a  very  little  way 
towards  being  able  to  teach  the  Gospel,  and 
still  more  to  translate  the  Bible  !  And  yet 
it  has  been  done,  in  hundreds  of  cases  ! 

Where  the  missionaries  find  no  written 
languages,  and  have  to  put  a  language  into 
writing  for  the  first  time,  they  generally  use 
our  roman  letters,  as  we  have  already  seen. 
But  where  there  are  settled  written  languages, 
as  in  India  and  China,  the  Bible  is  printed  in 
the  letters  or  characters  already  used.  Some 
of  these  also  I  have  shown  you  as  we  went 
along.  Here  are  some  others.  Hindi  is  the 
language  of  a  large  part  of  North  India.  Its 
character  is  that  of  the  ancient  Sanskrit,  and 


THE  MISSIONARY  VERSIONS     153 

is  used  in  other  Indian  languages  also  derived 
from  Sanskrit : — 

'^rif^lt  t^^  3mcT%  ^  WTT  f^ 

wn  i=rc^  ^^^  3fV^  Tn%  I 

Urdu  or  Hindustani  (there  is  a  difference 
which  I  need  not  go  into)  is  a  language 
largely  spoken  by  the  Mohammedans  in 
India,  but  is  used  by  many  Hindus  also.  It 
is  not  written  in  the  Sanskrit  character,  but 
in  the  Persian  character.  Here  it  is,  and 
the  same  Urdu  words  printed  also  in  our 
Roman  letters  : — 

hi  roman  letters 

Kyunki  Khuda  ne  dunya  se  aisi  mahabbat 
rakhi,  ki  us  ne  apna  iklauta  Beta  bakhsh 
diya,  taki  jo  koi  us  par  iman  lae,  halak  na  ho, 
balki  hamesha  ki  zlndagi  pae. 


154    THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

Here  is  the  language  of  the  Afghans,  called 
Pushtu  or  Pashto.  The  Mohammedans  are 
fond  of  decorating  their  books  with  beautiful 
illuminations  ;  so  the  Pushtu  Bible  imitates 
them  in  this  respect,  and  on  a  separate  page 
I  give  you  the  title-page  of  the  Books  of 
Kings  in  this  Version.  Pages  like  that  help 
to  commend  it  to  the  Afghans  : — 

^'.  i/r  ^  ^^  ^jj^j  J^^  '"^  'H  ^  *!;*/*  '^^-i/J  l/ 

Burmese  is  the  language  of  Burmah.  Its 
character,  an  ancient  one  called  Pali,  is 
curious : — 

ccoo3ijc^<5:n  cj)n58:(gS:o^  occpoSi  oooo 

ooolsoopS'oi   ojOc'cooo   ooo:gco5o^i   g^. 
gqo5<^od^c^6qsqo£i    gJ'^^^'^^^S 


^-^  "^-ji^^-j^--^-,;iP"-^-j^%-^-^  jf^^ 


Title-page  to  the  Books  of  Kings 
IN  Pashtu. 

To  face  f>,  154. 


THE  MISSIONARY  VERSIONS     155 

Still  more  curious  is  the  character  of  the 
Macassar  language,  spoken  in  the  Island  of 
Celebes  : — 

*C  '"is  ^    //  vy  N^    ^^  /v    A^  >«  '^  />   <^  ** , 
^\€>^  ^  *'^  ^v  A<  »c /^  % /s*N  *.   /^ /:   ^v*?* 

•  •  • 

But  now  think  a  little  of  the  difficulties 
of  translation.  There  are  nations  in  the 
world  that  have  never  seen  a  sheep.  How 
are  we  to  make  them  understand  the  words 
of  Jesus  Christ  about  the  Good  Shepherd, 
leading  His  sheep  out,  seeking  the  lost  sheep, 
laying  down  His  life  for  the  sheep  ?  How 
are  we  to  teach  them  the  23rd  Psalm,  "  The 
Lord  is  my  Shepherd  .  .  .  He  maketh  me 
to  lie  down  in  green  pastures,  and  leadeth 
me  beside  the  still  waters  "  ?  How  can  we 
explain  "  the  Lamb  of  God,  which  taketh 
away  the  sin  of  the  world "  ?  Let  me 
tell  you  what  the  missionaries  do  in  the 
Melanesian  Islands,  and  in  New  Guinea. 
There  are  no  sheep  there,  but  there  are 
pigs  ;    so  the  missionary  shows  a   picture  of 


156    THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

a  sheep,  tells  them  it  is  about  the  same  size 
as  a  pig,  and  makes  them  learn  the  English 
word  sheep.  Then  they  understand  a  little. 
Sometimes  the  pigs  wander  away,  and  are 
lost ;  and  the  people  go  and  search  for  them, 
and  when  they  find  them  they  bring  them 
home  on  their  shoulders,  or  carry  the  little 
ones  in  their  arms.  So  they  soon  understand 
how  a  shepherd  in  the  country  where  Jesus 
lived  on  earth  would  do  the  same  with  his 
sheep  ;  and  then  they  can  be  taught  that  the 
Lord's  care  for  His  people  is  like  that.  So 
when  they  hear  the  Bible  words  about  the 
shepherd  and  the  sheep  read,  or  when  they 
learn  to  read  them,  they  understand  what  the 
words  shepherd  and  sheep  mean. 

There  are  tribes  in  Asia,  between  India 
and  China,  who  have  no  word  for  "  father," 
nor  for  "  son,'*  nor  for  "  hand,"  nor  for 
"legs."  That  seems  extraordinary,  does  it 
not  r  Yes,  but  they  have  words  for  "  my 
father  "  and  "  your  father  "  and  "  his  father  "  ; 
for  "  my  hand  "  and  "  your  hand  "  and  "  his 
hand."  They  say  that  every  father  must 
be  somebody's  father,  and  every  hand  some- 
body's hand,  so  it  is  natural  for  them  to  say 
whose  father  or  whose  hand  they  are  speaking 


THE  MISSIONARY  VERSIONS     157 

of.  But  then  how  do  we  put  into  their 
language  the  words  "  God  the  Father "  and 
"  God  the  Son  "  ?  It  is  an  English  gentle- 
man under  the  Government  of  India  ^  who 
tells  us  this  ;  and  he  also  mentions  how  with 
some  tribes  the  only  idea  of  feasting  and 
being  merry  is  getting  drunk,  so  that  it  was 
hard  to  translate  into  their  language  the 
Parable  of  the  Prodigal  Son.  And  how 
could  we  explain  to  them  "  the  Feast  of  the 
Passover  "  ? 

The  same  writer  once  came  across  a  tribe 
in  India  who  thought  the  Christians'  God 
was  light  blue  in  colour,  which  seemed  to 
them  natural,  as  they  say  their  own  god 
Krishna  is  dark  blue.  How  came  they  to 
think  so  ?  Because  when  the  missionaries 
translated  the  words  "  Heavenly  Father " 
into  their  language,  the  word  for  "  heavenly  " 
was  one  which  they  commonly  use  for  "  sky- 
blue,"  the  colour  of  the  heavens  or  sky  ! 

But  how  much  more  difficult  must  it  be 
to  put  into  the  languages  of  barbarous  and 
ignorant  people  such  words  as  "  regene- 
ration,"    '*  justification,"    "  sanctification  "  ! 

1  Dr.  Grierson.  See  No.  5  of  the  Bible  Society's 
Centenary  Tracts. 


158    THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

The  present  Bishop  of  St.  Albans  (Dr. 
Jacob),  at  a  Bible  Meeting,  spoke  of  the 
difficulty  of  translating  the  first  verse  of 
Romans  v. — "  Therefore  being  justified  by- 
faith,  we  have  peace  vs^ith  God."  Cannibal 
tribes  that  are  always  fighting  could  only 
think  of  "  peace "  as  an  agreement  not  to 
fight  for  a  little  while  ;  "  faith  "  would  be  a 
strange  idea  to  them,  for  they  never  trust 
one  another  or  anybody  :  "  therefore  "  is  the 
sort  of  word  connecting  one  sentence  with 
another,  which  they  would  never  use  ;  and 
as  for  "justified,"  the  Bishop  said  "it  would 
drive  a  translator  to  despair !  " 

Even  with  the  ancient  languages  of 
civilized  people,  languages  in  which  many 
books  have  been  written,  it  is  not  easy  to 
make  correct  translations.  We  saw  the 
difficulty  with  our  own  English,  when  we 
compared  the  Authorized  and  Revised  Ver- 
sions ;  and  the  missionaries  who  have  made 
versions  in  the  languages  of  India,  Persia, 
China,  &c.,  find  that  they  must  revise  again 
and  again.  A  learned  missionary  in  India, 
Dr.  Hooper,  was  several  years  engaged  in 
revising  the  Hindi  Version  of  the  old  Testa- 
ment.    Let  us  see  one  or  two  of  his  puzzles. 


THE  MISSIONARY  VERSIONS     159 

Here  is  one  :  We  read  of  God  "  hiding  His 
face"  in  holy  displeasure;  but  the  people  of 
North  India  never  hide  their  faces  in  anger, 
but  only  when  they  are  ashamed,  so  it  would 
never  do  to  speak  to  them  of  God  hiding 
His  face  ;  and  the  impression  "  turn  away 
the  face"  had  to  be  used  instead.  Here  is 
another :  In  Gen.  xlvi.  4  God  promises 
Jacob  that  Joseph  should  put  his  hand  on 
his  (Jacob's)  eyes,  which  means  that  Joseph 
should  be  with  Jacob  when  Jacob  died, 
and  close  his  eyes.  Well,  a  learned  Hindu 
came  to  Dr.  Hooper  and  said  he  could  not 
understand  this  :  were  Jacob  and  Joseph  to 
have  a  stand-up  fight,  and  would  the  son  hit 
the  old  father  on  the  eye  so  hard  as  to  close  it  ? 
Once  more  :  In  Isa.  xxxiii.  15,  the  righteous 
man  is  described  as  one  who  "  shaketh  his 
hands  from  holding  of  bribes."  You  know 
that  in  Eastern  countries  there  is  much 
bribery  ;  for  instance,  a  man  who  ought  to 
be  punished  for  a  crime  will  sometimes 
privately  pay  the  judge  to  let  him  off,  and 
the  judge  takes  the  money  and  acquits  him  ; 
so  the  verse  in  Isaiah  is  an  important  one. 
Well,  a  learned  Hindu  pointed  out  to  Dr. 
Hooper    that    the    Hindi   word    which    was 


i6o    THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

going  to  be  put  into  the  translation  might 
mean  that  the  righteous  man  cast  away  the 
bribe  because  it  was  not  large  enough  ! 

So  you  see  how  important  it  is  to  revise 
all  the  Versions  very  carefully ;  and  great 
pains  are  taken  to  do  so.  In  a  new  edition 
for  the  Loyalty  Islands,  in  the  South  Seas, 
no  less  than  52,310  corrections  were  made. 
Let  us  always  sympathize  with  the  mission- 
aries who  have  this  and  other  literary  work 
to  do.  Let  us  pray  for  them,  and  thank 
God  for  them. 


CHAPTER   XI 

ABOUT    THE    INFLUENCE    OF    THE    BIBLE 

When  I  was  a  boy,  I  read  a  story  which 
showed  me  the  different  ways  in  which  we 
can  be  sure  that  this  great  Library  of  Sacred 
Books,  which  we  call  the  Bible,  is  really 
the  Word  of  God,  His  Revelation  to  man- 
kind. The  writer  of  the  story  had  been 
explaining  three  different  kinds  of  evidence^ 
the  Historical,  the  Internal,  and  the  Experi- 
mental. Then  he  told  how  he  once  sent 
a  boy  to  the  chemist's  to  get  some  phos- 
phorus. The  boy  brought  back  a  little 
packet ;  was  it  phosphorus  ?  The  boy  re- 
ported that  he  went  to  the  shop  and  asked 
for  phosphorus ;  that  the  chemist  went  to 
his  shelves,  took  some  kind  of  stuff  from  a 
jar,  put  it  in  the  little  packet,  and  gave  it 
to  him  ;  and  that  he  had  brought  it  straight 
back.     That  was  the   historical  evidence  that 

l6l  T 


1 62    THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

the  packet  had  phosphorus  in  it.  Then  the 
gentleman  opened  the  packet :  the  substance 
inside  looked  like  phosphorus  and  smelt  like 
phosphorus.  That  was  the  internal  evidence. 
Then  he  put  a  light  to  it — "  see  how  it 
burns  !  " — that  was  the  experimental  evidence. 

Now  we  have  historical  evidence  showing 
how  the  Bible  we  now  have  truly  represents 
the  Sacred  Books  written  long  ago.  This 
we  have  been  tracing  out  in  some  of  these 
chapters.  Then,  if  we  read  the  Bible,  we 
find  in  it  wonderful  and  gracious  words  that 
are  worthy  of  God.  That  is  the  internal 
evidence  that  He  inspired  it.  And  now  in 
this  chapter  I  want  to  show  you  a  little  of 
the  experimental  evidence  of  its  being  indeed 
His  Word. 

First  of  all,  think  how  the  Bible  stands 
alone  among  books.  No  other  has  ever 
been  read  so  much  ;  no  other  has  ever  been 
written  about  so  much.  There  are  a  great 
many  English  books  about  the  classics  which 
some  of  you  have  studied  at  school,  such 
as  Homer  and  Virgil ;  many  about  the  great 
Italian  poet  Dante  ;  very  many  about  Shake- 
speare. But  all  these  put  together  would 
not  be   nearly   equal   to   the  thousands  and 


INFLUENCE  OF  THE  BIBLE     163 

tens  of  thousands  of  books  written  to  explain 
the  Bible  and  impress  its  teachings  on  our 
minds  and  hearts.  And  we  have  never  done  ! 
Hosts  of  learned  men  to-day  are  examining, 
searching,  studying,  discussing  all  parts  of 
the  Bible.  Hosts  of  teachers  are  teaching 
it  to  young  folk.  Hosts  of  preachers  are 
preaching  on  Bible  texts  w^hich  have  been 
preached  on  a  thousand  times  before.  And 
yet  it  is  never  exhausted.  There  is  always 
more  to  say  about  it.  How  wonderful  it 
all  is  !  and  how  unique  ! 

When  our  King  Edward  was  crowned  in 
Westminster  Abbey,  one  of  the  most  im- 
portant ceremonies  was  the  presentation  to 
him  of  a  splendid  copy  of  the  Bible,  the 
Archbishop  of  Canterbury  saying,  as  he  gave 
it  to  His  Majesty,  "  This  Holy  Bible  is  the 
most  valuable  thing  that  this  world  affords." 
Those  words  have  been  spoken,  with  the 
same  ceremony,  at  many  previous  conse- 
crations. 

We  all  like  to  sin  "  God  save  the  King." 
Do  you  know  that  these  very  words  come 
from  the  Bible  ?  Look  at  i  Sam.  x.  24 ; 
I  Kings  i.  39;  2  Kings  xi.  12.  And 
when  we  sing  the  last  verse  (which  is  often 


i64    THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

missed),  "  O  Lord  our  God  arise,  Scatter 
his  enemies  .  ,  .  ,"  we  are  only  quoting 
the  1st  verse  of  the  68th  Psalm;  and  that 
Psalm  quotes  from  words  spoken  by  Moses 
hundreds  of  years  before  (Numb.  x.  35) — 
"  Rise  up.  Lord,  and  let  Thine  enemies  be 
scattered." 

If  you  go  to  the  Royal  Exchange  in  the 
City  of  London,  which  was  opened  by  Queen 
Victoria  in  1844,  you  will  see  an  inscription 
over  the  great  front  portico — "  The  earth 
is  the  Lord's,  and  the  fulness  thereof,"  from 
the  I  St  verse  of  the  24th  Psalm.  And  the 
University  of  Oxford  has  for  its  motto  the 
first  words  of  the  27th  Psalm  in  Latin, 
Dominus  tlluminatio  mea.  No  words  for  such 
purposes  like  Bible  words  I 

And  no  books  are  so  constantly  quoted 
in  other  books  as  the  Books  of  the  Bible. 
If  you  read  Shakspeare,  for  instance,  you 
will  find  many  passages  which  you  cannot 
understand  if  you  do  not  know  the  Bible  ; 
and  so  with  all  the  great  English  writers, 
down  to  Carlyle  and  Ruskin  and  Tennyson, 
and  even  great  novelists  like  Dickens  and 
Thackeray. 

In    Parliament    men    do    not    quote    from 


INFLUENCE  OF  THE  BIBLE     165 

the  Bible ;  and  why  ?  Because  they  feel 
that  it  is  not  like  other  books,  and  they  have 
a  kind  of  reverence  for  it.  Even  those  who 
do  not  believe  it  would  be  afraid  to  use  its 
words  for  fear  of  offending  others.  But 
now  and  then  some  great  man  has  ventured 
to  quote  a  text  solemnly.  Once  Mr.  John 
Bright,  in  one  of  his  powerful  speeches, 
appealed  to  the  two  leaders,  Conservative 
and  Liberal,  to  put  their  heads  together 
and  seek  out  a  way  to  deal  with  a  very 
perplexing  matter  ;  and  suddenly,  with  great 
solemnity  he  said,  "  Unto  the  upright  there 
ariseth  light  in  the  darkness " ;  and  the 
crowded  House  almost  held  its  breath,  so 
deep  was  the  impression  made.  Where  did 
he  get  these  words  ?  From  Shakspeare  or 
Lord  Bacon  or  Burke  ?  No,  but  from  a 
short  song  written  two  or  three  thousand 
years  ago  by  an  unknown  Jew  ! — from  the 
1 1 2th  Psalm!  Another  great  statesman 
used  constantly  to  find  strength  and  comfort 
in  the  Bible,  particularly  the  Psalms — Mr. 
Gladstone.  He  wrote  in  1854, — "On  most 
occasions  of  very  sharp  pressure  or  trial,  some 
word  of  Scripture  has  come  home  to  me 
as  if  borne  on   angels'  wings.     The  Psalms 


1 66     THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

are  the  great  storehouse."  When  he  was 
going  to  make  his  first  Budget  speech,  in 
1853,  this  verse  came  to  him: — "O  turn 
Thee  unto  me,  and  have  mercy  upon  me  : 
give  Thy  strength  unto  Thy  servant,  and 
help  the  son  of  Thy  handmaid."  Other 
godly  statesmen,  like  Lord  Cairns  and  Lord 
Selborne,  had  the  same  experience. 

More  than  any  other  part  of  the  Bible,  the 
Psalms  have  been  a  precious  treasure  to  mul- 
titudes of  men  for  two  thousand  years.  You 
will  remember  that  in  our  second  chapter 
I  showed  you  how  wonderful  it  is  that  the 
51st  Psalm  was  written  at  all,  and  has  been 
preserved  all  these  ages,  and  that  even  to-day, 
when  we  want  to  confess  our  sins,  or  when  a 
Frenchman  or  a  Russian  or  a  Hindu  or  a 
Chinaman  or  a  Negro  wants  to  confess  his 
sins,  there  are  no  better  words  to  use  than 
the  words  of  that  old  Psalm.  And  you  will 
remember  my  telling  you  in  our  seventh 
chapter  how  in  many  monasteries  in  the 
Middle  Ages  the  monks  learned  the  whole 
150  Psalms  by  heart.  But  learning  Psalms 
began  long  before  that.  It  was  common 
among  the  Jews.  Let  us  remember,  with 
deep  reverence,  that  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ 


INFLUENCE  OF  THE  BIBLE     167 

Himself  used  two  ancient  Psalms  while  He 
was  dying  on  the  Cross.  When  the  burden 
of  the  sin  of  the  world  was  pressing  heavily 
on  His  soul,  His  agony  burst  forth  in  the 
words  of  the  22nd  Psalm — "My  God,  My 
God,  why  hast  Thou  forsaken  Me  ?  "  And 
His  very  last  words  were  from  the  31st  Psalm, 
"  Into  Thy  hands  I  commend  My  spirit." 

When  we  read  of  the  sufferings  and  mar- 
tyrdoms of  the  early  Christians,  we  constantly 
find  that  they  chanted  verses  from  the  Psalms 
under  torture  and  in  face  of  death.  For  ex- 
ample, two  brothers  who  gave  up  an  hon- 
ourable position  to  make  shoes  for  the  poor, 
Crispin  and  Crispinian,  found  comfort  during 
frightful  tortures  by  chanting  part  of  the  79th 
Psalm — "  Help  us,  O  God  of  our  salvation, 
for  the  glory  of  Thy  Name  .  .  .  Wherefore 
should  the  heathen  say.  Where  is  their  God  ?  " 
A  young  soldier  named  Theodore  sang  the 
34th  Psalm — "  I  will  bless  the  Lord  at  all 
times ;  His  praise  shall  continually  be  in  my 
mouth."  And  it  was  not  only  in  times  of 
suffering  that  the  Psalms  were  sung,  but  in 
everyday  life  too.  Ploughmen  and  reapers 
and  vine-dressers  chanted  them  at  their  work. 
Sidonius  Apollinaris,  who  was    Governor  of 


i68    THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

Rome  in  the  5th  century  and  afterwards  a 
bishop,  describes  the  boatmen  on  the  rivers 
making  the  river-banks  echo  with  their 
hallelujahs.  Saint  Ambrose  says,  "  Any  one 
possessed  of  his  five  wits  should  blush  with 
shame  if  he  did  not  begin  the  day  with  a 
Psalm,  since  even  the  tiniest  birds  open  and 
close  the  day  with  sweet  songs  of  holy 
devotion."  Saint  Augustine's  conversion  was 
not  through  a  Psalm,  but  through  reading 
the  last  verse  or  two  of  Rom.  xiii. ;  but  his 
wonderful  book  of  Confessions  is  full  of  the 
Psalms,  and  his  other  great  book,  The  City 
of  Gody  was  named  from  the  words  of  the 
87th  Psalm  which  are  its  motto,  "Glorious 
things  are  spoken  of  thee,  thou  city  of 
God/'  1 

The  5t:h  verse  of  Psalm  xxxi.  which  our 
Lord  Himself  specially  consecrated  by  using 
it  as  His  dying  words,  has  been  used  by 
hundreds  of  His  servants  as  they  yielded  up 
their  spirits  in  death  ;  and  even  by  not  a  few 
whom  we  perhaps  do  not  think  of  as  engaged 
in  His  work,  but  who  looked  to  Him  in  the 

^  The  illustrations  in  this  paragraph,  and  some 
of  those  that  follow,  are  from  that  delightful  book, 
Prothero's  Psalms  in  Human  Life. 


INFLUENCE  OF  THE  BIBLE     169 

last  hour.  The  words,  "  Into  Thy  hand  I 
commend  my  spirit,"  are  recorded  as  uttered 
by  Saint  Augustine,  and  Archbishop  Becket 
of  Canterbury,  and  Sir  Thomas  More,  and 
Christopher  Columbus,  and  Luther,  and 
Melanchthon,  and  Lady  Jane  Grey,  and 
Mary  Queen  of  Scots,  and  Robert  Southwell 
the  Jesuit  (who  was  cruelly  executed  under 
Queen  Elizabeth) ;  and,  actually  while 
burning  at  the  stake,  by  the  Bohemian 
Reformers,  John  Hus  and  Jerome  of  Prague, 
and  the  English  Reformers,  Hooper  and 
Ridley.  Sir  Thomas  More  and  Lady  Jane 
Grey  also  repeated  the  51st  Psalm  on  the 
scaffold  ;  and  so  did  Saint  Theresa,  the  holiest 
of  Spanish  women,  as  she  lay  dying.  Saint 
Francis  Xavier,  the  great  Jesuit  missionary, 
died  with  the  first  verse  of  the  31st  Psalm  on 
his  lips,  the  verse  with  which  our  Te  Deum 
ends,  "  O  Lord,  in  Thee  have  I  trusted  ; 
let  me  never  be  confounded." 

Coming  down  to  later  times,  we  find  John 
Wesley  faintly  repeating  again  and  again  on 
his  death-bed  the  7th  verse  of  Psalm  xlvi., 
"The  Lord  of  hosts  is  with  us,  the  God 
of  Jacob  is  our  refuge  "  ;  William  Wilber- 
force,   the   brilliant    statesman    who   got   the 


170    THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

slave-trade  abolished  and  India  opened  to  the 
Gospel,  repeating  the  119th  Psalm  as  he 
walked  in  Hyde  Park  ;  Henry  Martyn,  the 
missionary,  amid  the  trials  and  sufferings  of 
his  last  journey  through  Armenia,  beguiling 
the  weary  hours  by  repeating  Psalms  and 
translating  them  into  Persian  ;  Dr.  Arnold 
of  Rugby  as  he  lay  dying,  turning  to  that 
51st  Psalm  which  I  have  mentioned  before, 
and  saying  the  12th  verse  in  the  Prayer-book 
Version — "  O  give  me  the  comfort  of  Thy 
help  again,  and  stablish  me  with  Thy  free 
Spirit "  ;  Captain  Allen  Gardiner,  dying  of 
starvation  in  Patagonia,  painting,  on  a  rock 
near  the  cave  in  which  he  lay,  just  the 
reference  "  Ps.  Ixii.  5-8,"  with  a  hand 
pointing  towards  the  cave,  so  that  he  or  his 
dead  body  might  be  found  ;  John  Ruskin, 
disliking  the  long  119th  Psalm  when  he 
learnt  it  as  a  child,  yet  afterwards  adopting 
it  as  the  key-note  of  his  writings  ;  Living- 
stone, sustaining  himself  day  by  day,  both  in 
Africa  and  in  England,  with  the  5th  verse 
of  the  37th  Psalm — "Commit  thy  way  unto 
the  Lord ;  trust  also  in  Him,  and  He  shall 
bring  it  to  pass "  ;  and  Bishop  Hannington, 
in  the  miserable  shed  in  which  he  was  kept 


INFLUENCE  OF  THE  BIBLE     171 

for  a  week  pending  the  king''s  orders, 
writing  on  October  28th,  "  Comforted  by 
Psalm  xxvii.,"  and  again,  "  Much  comforted 
by  Psalm  xxviii.,  and  next  day,  "  Held  up  by 
Psalm  XXX.,  which  came  with  great  power  " 
— his  last  entry  in  that  little  diary  which  was 
so  wonderfully  preserved  and  recovered. 

In  our  eighth  chapter  I  told  you  how  the 
Reformation  gave  us  our  English  Bible. 
But  multitudes  of  people  could  not  read, 
and  even  if  they  could  read  they  could  not 
afford  to  buv  a  book  which  cost  so  much  to 
produce.  Then  the  Psalms  were  particularly 
valuable,  because  they  were  easily  learned 
by  heart.  But  in  order  to  make  this  easier 
still,  they  were  put  into  English  verse.  The 
first  version  of  this  kind  was  begun  in  Edward 
VI. 's  time,  by  a  "  groom  of  the  king's 
robes'*  named  Sternhold,  and  completed  by 
other  writers ;  and  another  version  was 
afterwards  made  by  Tate  and  Brady,  and  a 
third  in  Scotland.  These  poetical  versions 
became  widely  known,  and  taught  the  people 
much.  The  Scotch  Psalms  are  sung  to  this 
day,  and  are  greatly  beloved  by  the  High- 
landers especially.  When  I  was  a  boy,  the 
hymn-books  we  now  use  did  not  exist ;  and 


172    THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

most  Prayer-books  had  Tate  and  Brady's 
poetical  Psalms  bound  up  with  them.  Some 
of  their  verses  were  very  poor,  and  we  might 
be  tempted  to  laugh  at  them  now  ;  but 
they  did  good  service  in  their  dav,  and  we 
still  sing  some  of  them.  What  we  call 
"the  Old  Hundredth,"  "All  people  that  on 
earth  do  dwell,"  is  a  version  of  the  looth 
Psalm  made  by  W.  Kethe  and  published  in 
Sternhold's  edition  ;  and  that  beautiful  hymn, 
"  Through  all  the  changing  scenes  of  life," 
is  part  of  Tate  and  Brady's  version  of  Ps. 
xxxiv.  And  when  other  poets  began  to  write 
hymns,  they  generally  made  them  from  the 
Psalms.  Milton  wrote  "Let  us  with  a  glad- 
some mind"  on  the  136th  Psalm;  Addison 
wrote  "  The  spacious  firmament  on  high " 
on  the  19th,  and  "The  Lord  my  pasture 
shall  prepare  "  on  the  23rd  ;  and  Dr.  Watts 
wrote  "  Jesus  shall  reign  where'er  the  sun  " 
on  the  72nd,  and  "  O  God  our  help  in  ages 
past"  on  the  90th. 

But  we  must  not  think  only  of  the  Psalms, 
precious  as  they  are.  We  are  tracing  the 
influence  of  the  whole  Bible  and  of  the 
various  parts  of  it.  Thousands  of  men  who, 
though  born  and  baptized  in  Christian  lands, 


INFLUENCE  OF  THE  BIBLE     173 

cared  nothing  about  God,  have  been  brought 
to  repentance  and  faith  and  an  entirely- 
changed  hfe,  simply  through  reading  the 
Bible  ;  while  Jews  and  Mohammedans  and 
Pagans  have  learned  from  its  sacred  pages 
the  one  way  of  salvation  through  Jesus 
Christ.  In  the  17th  chapter  of  the  Acts 
we  read  of  both  Jews  and  Greeks  at  Berea 
"searching  the  Scriptures  daily"  to  see 
whether  the  wonderful  news  which  St.  Paul 
had  brought  them  was  true ;  and  those 
Scriptures  were  the  Old  Testament,  as  I 
showed  you  in  our  fourth  chapter.  What 
came  of  this  ?  We  are  told,  "  Therefore 
many  of  them  believed."  It  was  because 
they  searched  the  Scriptures  that  they  came 
to  believe  ;  and  so  it  always  is,  if  there  is 
a  real  desire  to  know  the  truth.  From  that 
day  to  this,  those  who  have  read  the  Scrip- 
tures as  the  Bereans  did  have  found  that 
God's  Sacred  Writings  were  "able  to  make 
them  wise  unto  salvation  through  faith  in 
Christ  Jesus."  I  will  give  two  or  three 
instances. 

There  was  an  Italian  soldier  forty  years 
ago  who  picked  up  in  the  street  of  the 
city  of  Perugia  a  leaf  of  the    Italian  New 


174    THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

Testament.  In  those  days  the  Bible  was 
not  allowed  to  be  read  in  that  part  of  Italy, 
and  the  soldier  did  not  know  what  the  leaf 
was.  But  he  read  it,  and  was  struck  by 
its  beautiful  words  (I  wish  I  knew  which 
they  were)  ;  and  finding  that  the  book  from 
which  the  leaf  came  could  be  got  at  Turin 
(where  it  was  not  forbidden),  he  sent  and 
got  a  copy  and  read  it.  It  at  once  opened 
his  eyes,  and  taught  him  the  true  doctrine 
of  Jesus  Christ.  Soon  after  that,  Italy  be- 
came a  free  and  united  kingdom,  as  it  is  now, 
and  immediately  the  Bible  began  to  be  sold 
in  Rome.  After  that  soldier,  having  been 
wounded,  left  the  army,  he  gave  his  whole 
time  to  going  from  regiment  to  regiment 
telling  his  fellow-soldiers  of  Jesus  Christ ; 
and  in  a  few  years  there  were  in  most  of 
the  cities  bands  of  soldiers  who  read  the 
Bible  and  prayed  together.  The  Roman 
priests  did  not  like  this,  but  so  much  good 
was  done  to  the  men  in  making  them  obe- 
dient and  trustworthy,  that  the  King  of 
Italy  made  him  a  knight,  and  he  was  known 
as  the  Cavaliere  Capellini.  I  myself  once 
met  a  number  of  Capellini's  men  on  a  Sunday 
evening  in  Rome,  and  addressed  them  ;  and 


INFLUENCE  OF  THE  BIBLE     175 

I  thought,  "  This  all  comes  from  that  single 
leaf  of  the  New  Testament  !  " 

In  our  Missions  abroad  we  have  found 
that  nothing  does  so  much  to  bring  the 
well-educated  Heathen  and  Mohammedans 
to  Christ  as  the  reading  of  the  Bible.  Pro- 
fessor Ram  Chandra,  a  learned  Hindu  who 
wrote  mathematical  books,  and  became  head 
of  a  government  school  at  Delhi,  and  after- 
wards Director  of  Public  Instruction  in  the 
State  of  Patiala,  was  converted  through  read- 
ing the  New  Testament,  without  any  human 
teaching.  The  Rev.  Dr.  Imad-ud-din,  a 
Mohammedan  who  was  so  highly  revered 
that  pilgrims  came  hundreds  of  miles  to  kiss 
his  feet  and  receive  his  blessing,  was  turned 
to  the  Lord  through  reading  St.  Matthew's 
Gospel.  He  became  a  clergyman,  and  was 
a  faithful  preacher  and  teacher  and  writer 
for  over  thirty  years.  Safdar  Ali,  another 
Mohammedan  gentleman  who  became  an 
Education  Commissioner  under  the  British 
Government,  spent  three  years  comparing 
the  Bible  and  the  Koran,  without  inter- 
course with  missionaries,  and  in  the  third 
year,  helped  by  a  learned  Hindu  who  had 
become  a  Christian,  Nehemiah  Nilkanth,  he 


176     THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

came  out  and  was  baptized.  Satthianadhan 
was  a  boy  in  Tinnevelly  who  objected  to 
read  the  Christian  Bible ;  but  having  to 
read  it  in  his  class,  he  was  gradually  led  by 
it  to  believe  in  Christ.  He  became  an  able 
and  faithful  clergyman  at  Madras  ;  and  he 
was  the  father  of  Christian  sons  and  daughters 
who  have  done  excellent  service. 

Uncivilized  people  also  have  been  brought 
out  of  darkness  into  light  by  reading  pas- 
sages from  God's  Word.  Here  is  one  case. 
Seventy  years  ago,  in  New  Zealand,  a  Maori 
who  had  learned  to  read  picked  up  a  torn 
copy  of  St.  Luke"'s  Gospel  in  the  Maori 
language,  which  had  belonged  to  a  little 
Maori  girl,  a  Christian,  who  had  been  killed 
by  her  tribe.  Two  young  chiefs  asked  him 
to  read  it  to  them.  He  said  No,  it  was  a  bad 
book,  as  those  who  read  it  would  not  fight  or 
drink  rum  or  take  two  wives.  However  he 
did  read  it  to  them ;  and  it  so  impressed 
them  that  they  started  off  to  a  distant  part  of 
New  Zealand  where  the  English  missionaries 
were,  and  begged  for  a  teacher.  A  new  man 
who  had  just  come  from  England  (1838), 
named  Hadfield,  was  sent.  Just  at  the  same 
time,  another  young  chief  picked  up  a  stray 


INFLUENCE  OF  THE  BIBLE     177 

leaf  of  the  Church  Catechism  in  Maori, 
which  contained  the  Ten  Commandments  ; 
and,  without  any  one  to  teach  them,  he  and 
his  people  had  cast  away  their  idols  and 
were  worshipping  the  One  God,  keeping 
the  seventh  day,  and  obeying  the  other  Com- 
mandments. In  the  part  of  New  Zealand 
where  these  two  incidents  occurred,  there 
were  in  after  years  thousands  of  Maori 
Christians,  and  the  Bishop  over  them  was 
the  Mr.  Hadfield  who  had  been  sent  there 
long  before. 

One  more  case,  from  Japan.  A  young 
Japanese  named  Niisima,  forty  years  ago, 
was  struck  by  the  first  sentence  in  a  book 
of  geography  in  the  Chinese  language  (which 
he  knew),  written  by  an  American  missionary. 
These  were  the  words  :  "In  the  beginning 
God  created  the  heaven  and  the  earth,'* 
which  of  course  had  been  taken  from  the 
first  chapter  of  Genesis.  "  What  God  can 
that  be  ? "  he  thought ;  and  he  actually 
went  to  China,  and  then  to  America,  "  to 
find  the  God  that  made  heaven  and  earth." 
He  did  truly  find  Him,  at  Boston  ;  and  by 
and  by  he  went  back  to  his  own  country 
as    a    Christian    missionary,    and    started    a 

M 


178    THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

great  college  which  has  taught  hundreds  of 
Japanese  about  Jesus  Christ. 

And  so  it  is  everywhere.  There  was  the 
remarkable  Chinaman,  Pastor  Hsi,  to  whom 
Mr.  Hill,  the  Wesleyan  missionary,  lent  a 
New  Testament,  leaving  him  alone  while 
he  read  it.  There  was  the  learned  Jew 
in  Hungary,  Alfred  Edersheim,  converted 
to  Christ  by  the  same  means,  who  afterwards 
wrote  a  valuable  Life  of  Christ.  A  few 
vears  ago,  the  son  of  the  Japanese  Minister 
at  the  Chinese  Court,  and  three  Secretaries 
of  the  Japanese  Legation,  went  to  the  wife 
of  the  Rev.  Timothy  Richard,  saying  that 
in  reading  English  books  they  found  many 
references  to  the  Bible  and  the  Christian 
religion  which  they  could  not  understand, 
and  asked  her  what  they  should  do.  "  Read 
the  New  Testament,"  she  replied.  So  they 
did ;  and  before  they  had  been  reading  a 
fortnight  they  were  so  full  of  it  that  they 
could  read  nothing  else.  All  four  were 
baptized  at  Peking. 

And  then  there  is  the  general  influence 
of  the  Bible,  in  enlightening,  in  guiding, 
in  comforting.  Think  what  it  has  done 
for    Uganda,    teaching    a   whole    nation    to 


INFLUENCE  OF  THE  BIBLE     179 

understand  right  and  wrong,  and  revealing 
the  power  to  do  the  right  and  avoid  the 
wrong.  Think  of  the  Red  Indians  in  British 
Columbia,  who  told  Bishop  Ridley  when 
he  read  St.  Matthew  to  them  in  their  own 
tongue,  "  We  saw  before  through  a  narrow 
slit ;  now  the  door  is  wide  open."  Think 
of  the  Japanese  soldiers  starting  for  the  seat 
of  war  with  Russia,  begging  for  little  Gospels 
to  carry  with  them,  because  they  were  sure 
the  God  of  the  Christians  could  give  them 
peace  in  death.  Think  of  the  Chinese 
Christians  massacred  in  the  Boxer  riots,  who 
hid  their  Bibles  and  portions  of  Scripture 
in  the  earth,  and  in  rocky  caves,  that  they 
might  be  ready  for  those  that  should  come 
after ;  and  of  the  little  Chinese  girl  who  was 
tortured  to  death  because  she  would  not 
tell  the  tormentors  where  the  precious  books 
were  hidden.  Think  of  the  British  sailors 
shipwrecked  on  a  South  Sea  Island,  and  afraid 
that  the  people  might  be  cannibals,  suddenly 
cheered  by  one  sailor  peeping  into  a  hut 
and  crying  out,  ''  I  say,  Jack  !  it's  all  right  ! 
here's  a  Bible  !  " 

And    then    remember    that    the    Bible    is 
itself  a    missionary.     It    can    go  where    the 


i8o    THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

missionary  cannot  go.  For  instance,  no 
missionary  can  get  into  Afghanistan.  If 
one  tried  to  cross  the  Indian  Frontier,  the 
British  officers  would  arrest  him  and  send 
him  back.  For  the  Afghans  are  bigoted 
Mohammedans,  who  think  nothing  of  mur- 
der, and  our  Government  will  not  let  an 
Englishman  run  any  risk.  But  during  the 
last  Afghan  War,  in  1879-80,  missionaries 
from  the  great  frontier  city  of  Peshawar, 
where  our  troops  are,  went  up  into  Afghan- 
istan behind  the  British  Army ;  and  what 
did  they  find  ?  They  found  in  the  Afghan 
cities  chiefs  and  merchants  reading  the 
Scriptures.  How  had  those  Afghans  got 
them  ?  Why,  in  time  of  peace  they  had 
sometimes  visited  Peshawar,  and  received 
the  books  from  the  missionaries  there.  In 
the  last  chapter  (p.  154)  I  showed  you  a 
specimen  of  the  Afghan  Scriptures,  and  a 
picture  of  one  of  the  title-pages. 

So  now  you  have  seen  some  of  the  Ex- 
perhnental  Evidence  that  the  Bible,  though 
composed  of  so  many  books  written  by 
many  men,  is  really  God's  own  Sacred 
Book.  For  what  other  book  could  have 
done  all  the  wonderful   things  I  have   told 


INFLUENCE  OF  THE  BIBLE     i8i 

you  in  this  chapter  ?  And  they  are  the 
more  wonderful  because  one  would  scarcely 
expect  them.  There  is  a  great  deal  in  the 
Bible  which  is  very  difficult  to  understand. 
There  is  not  a  single  Book  in  it  which  is 
really  simple.  A  vast  number  of  books 
have  been  written  to  help  us  to  understand 
it ;  and  sermons  and  lessons  are  constantly 
being  given  to  make  it  clearer  to  us.  And 
yet  we  take  this  great  Volume,  with  all 
its  difficulties,  and  translate  it  the  best  way 
we  can  into  the  languages  of  people  all 
over  the  world  (as  I  showed  you  in  the 
last  chapter),  and  we  put  it  just  as  it  is 
into  their  hands.  One  would  think  this 
was  a  very  foolish  thing  to  do,  and  likely 
to  do  harm  !  But  the  Experimental  Evi- 
dence shows  us  that  we  have  done  a  wise 
thing,  and  that  nothing  but  good  has  come 
of  it !  Why  is  that  ?  There  can  be  only 
one  reason,  and  that  is  that  after  all  it  is 
God's  Book,  and  He  takes  care  of  it  and 
uses  it  !  And  so  His  own  promise  comes 
true  (Isa.  Iv.  ii),  "It  shall  accomplish  that 
which  I  please,  and  prosper  in  the  thing 
whereto  I  sent  it." 

About    twenty    years    ago,    some    learned 


1 82     THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

men  who  did  not  believe  in  our  God  and 
Saviour  v^^rote  books  against  the  Bible,  try- 
ing to  show  that  it  was  not  a  Divine  Book. 
Men  had  often  done  that  before,  and  very 
likely  there  will  be  always  some  who  will 
do  so  ;  but  the  Bible  goes  on  just  the  same, 
accomplishing  what  God  pleases  and  pros- 
pering in  the  thing  whereto  He  sends  it. 
Now  just  at  the  time  I  am  thinking  of,  three 
little  packets  came  to  London  from  three 
different  parts  of  the  world.  One  came 
from  the  northernmost  island  of  Japan,  and 
was  written  in  the  language  of  that  strange 
wild  people,  the  "  Hairy  Ainu."  The 
second  came  from  the  Far  West  of  Canada, 
from  an  island  off  the  shores  of  British 
Columbia,  where  a  tribe  called  the  Kwa- 
gutl  people  live.  The  third  came  from 
Uganda,  in  the  heart  of  Africa.  The 
three  little  packets  all  contained  the  same 
thing,  St.  Matthew's  Gospel,  one  in  Ainu, 
one  in  Kwa-gutl,  and  one  in  Luganda.  It 
was  in  each  case  the  first  attempt  to  give 
the  people  a  little  bit  of  God's  Book  in 
their  own  language  ;  yes,  and  the  first  at- 
tempt to  write  out  anything  in  the  language 
at  all,  for  not  one  of  those  three  languages 


INFLUENCE  OF  THE  BIBLE     183 

had  ever  been  written  down  before.  Well, 
all  three  versions  of  St.  Matthew  were 
printed  in  England  by  the  Bible  Society, 
and  copies  sent  out  to  those  three  distant 
countries  ;  and  those  three  peoples  received 
them  joyfully,  and  learned  to  read  them, 
and  found  in  them  the  messages  of  God's 
great  love.  So  while  men  were  attacking 
the  Bible,  the  Bible  just  went  on  and  did 
its  own  work  ! 

Do  you  want  to  defend  the  Bible  when  it 
is  attacked  ?  Mr.  Spurgeon  once  said,  "  If  a 
lion  in  a  cage  were  attacked,  how  would  you 
defend  it?  Yoii  would  just  let  it  out!'''' 
So  do  with  the  Bible.  Let  it  out  ! — all  over 
the  world  ! 


CHAPTER   XII 

ABOUT    READING    THE    BIBLE 

I  HAVE  finished  my  Story  of  the  Bible.  I 
have  told  you  how  the  books  that  make  up 
that  v^^onderful  Sacred  Library  came  to  be 
written,  and  how  they  were  preserved  through 
the  ages,  and  how  different  English  and 
foreign  Versions  came  to  be  made,  and  what 
a  great  work  the  Bible  is  doing  to-day.  Let 
me  now  talk  a  little  about  your  own  reading 
of  the  Bible. 

Of  course  you  all  do  read  it.  But  do  you 
like  it  .f*  Does  it  interest  you  ?  Do  you 
enjoy  it  ?  Is  it  as  nice  as  other  books  ?  And 
does  it  really  help  you  to  love  God,  and  serve 
Him,  and  please  Him  .?  Numbers  of  people 
read  it  because  it  is  the  proper  thing  to  do, 
but  they  don't  care  for  it,  and  are  glad  when 

the  reading  is  done.     I  am  not  surprised  at 

184 


ABOUT  READING  THE  BIBLE     185 

this.  Every  book  is  dry  until  you  under- 
stand something  about  it.  A  book  about 
gardening,  for  instance — how  dry  it  is  if  you 
know  nothing  about  flowers,  or  don't  care 
about  them  !  Boys  like  to  read  a  book  about 
cricket  ;  but  suppose  you  knew  nothing  of 
the  game,  suppose  you  did  not  know  the 
difference  between  a  ball  and  a  bail,  between 
an  on-drive  and  a  leg-hit,  would  it  interest 
you  then  ?  Well,  I  want  to  show  you  in 
this  chapter  how  you  may  be  really  interested 
in  the  Bible. 

No  doubt  it  is  good  to  read  the  Bible,  even 
if  you  only  do  it  as  a  duty,  for  if  you  do,  you 
may  come  presently  to  love  it.  But  it  is 
better  to  read  it  because  it  interests  you. 
And  it  is  best  of  all  to  read  it  as  a  Letter 
from  our  Father  in  Heaven.  When  you  are 
away  from  home,  you  value  a  letter  from 
your  father  or  your  mother.  Perhaps  there 
are  things  in  it  which  you  do  not  understand. 
Perhaps  the  very  hand-writing  is  hard  to 
make  out.  But  it  is  a  letter  from  home,  a 
letter  from  those  you  love  at  home,  and  you 
are  delighted  to  get  and  read  it.  There  are 
many  people  who  love  the  Bible  in  the  same 


i86    THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

way  ;  and  I  hope  you  will  all  learn  to  love  it 
like  that. 

First  of  all,  if  you  want  really  to  under- 
stand the  Bible,  there  are  certain  helps  which 
you  ought  to  have.  You  should  use  a  Refer- 
ence Bible,  and  when  you  are  really  studying 
a  passage  you  should  carefully  look  out  all  the 
references  as  you  read  it  verse  by  verse, 
though  this  need  not  be  done  in  ordinary 
reading.  You  should  have  a  Concordance, 
and  often  look  out  in  it  the  leading  words 
in  a  passage,  that  you  may  know  where  else 
they  are  used.^  You  should  have  either  the 
Oxford  or  Cambridge  Helps  or  the  King"'s 
Printers"  Aids^  which  will  give  you  all  sorts 
of  necessary  information.  You  should  have 
both  the  Authorized  and  the  Revised  Versions 
before  you,  and  note  the  changes  made  in 
the  latter.  These  will  enable  you  to  study 
the  Bible  properly,  and  make  you  really 
interested  in  it.     And  then  it  would  be  well 

^  Of  course  the  ordinary  Concordance  only  serves 
for  tracing  the  English  words.  Young's  Analytical 
Concordance  should  be  obtained  if  possible,  as  it 
enables  readers  who  are  not  Greek  or  Hebrew 
scholars  to  see  how  an  English  word  stands  for 
several  in  the  original. 


ABOUT  READING  THE  BIBLE     187 

also  to  have  a  Commentary,  to  explain  the 
difficult  passages.^ 

Now  suppose  you  have  these  helps  by  you, 
or  some  of  them,  what  is  the  best  way  of 
choosing  what  you  shall  read  ? 

1.  The  Bible  is  not  a  collection  of  pretty 
texts.  It  is  very  nice  to  use  a  book  like 
Daily  Light^  which  gives  you  every  morning 
and  evening  a  number  of  beautifully-chosen 
verses  to  think  about.  I  use  it  myself,  and 
I  value  it.  It  is  sure  to  bring  a  message 
from  God  to  your  soul,  if  you  are  ready  to 
receive  it.  But  mind ! — that  is  not  reading 
the  Bible,  and  must  not  be  put  in  the  place 
of  reading  the  Bible. 

2.  You  must  read  all  the  Bible  !  If  it 
pleases  God  to  give  us  His  revelations  in  the 
form  of  histories  and  biographies  and  genea- 
logies and  laws  and  songs  and  proverbs  and 
prophecies  and  letters,  who  are  we  that  we 
should    complain  ?       He    knows    best  !       Of 

^  The  S.P.C.K.  Commentary,  or  the  Cambridge 
Bible  for  Schools,  or  the  R.T.S.  Annotated 
Paragraph  Bible,  can  be  recommended  for  short 
notes.  Ellicott's  Commentary  for  English  Readers 
(Cassell)  is  the  best  on  a  larger  scale,  though 
unequal  in  the  Old  Testament. 


1 88     THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

course  some  parts  are  more  profitable  than 
others,  and  may  be  read  oftener  ;  and  some 
parts  are  not  suitable  for  reading  aloud.  But 
no  part  is  to  be  put  aside  altogether. 

3.  It  is  good  to  follow  the  Church  Cal- 
endar ;  only  if  you  do,  you  must  do  it 
thoroughly.  If  you  read  only  the  Morning 
Lessons,  for  instance,  and  not  the  Evening 
Lessons,  you  will  be  skipping  every  other 
chapter,  and  lose  the  connection.  Or  you 
can  join  one  of  the  Scripture  Unions,  which 
carefully  select  shorter  passages.  The  Chil- 
dren's Scripture  Union  is  excellent,  and  many 
grown-up  people  belong  to  it  as  well  as 
children. 

4.  But  for  real  Bible  study,  it  is  not  good 
to  go  steadily  through  from  Genesis  to  Revela- 
tion. Canon  Girdlestone,  who  has  written 
a  capital  little  book  on  the  subject,^  says, 
"Imagine  an  Early  English  chronicle,  part 
of  the  Domesday  Book,  some  of  Chaucer's 
Tales,  a  play  of  Shakspeare,  an  essay  of 
Milton,  a  sermon  by  South,  some  of  Lord 

1  How  to  Study  the  English  Bible;  R.T.S. 
Another  useful  book  for  young  students  is  Syste- 
matic Scripture  Study ^  by  the  Rev.  D.  H.  D. 
Wilkinson  ;  C.M.S. 


ABOUT  READING  THE  BIBLE     189 

Chesterfield's  Letters,  and  a  sketch  by 
Macaulay,  put  together  into  one  book,  and 
translated  into  one  of  the  South  Sea  Island 
languages  for  the  benefit  of  the  islanders 
2000  years  hence,  and  all  divided  up  into 
chapters  and  verses  !  "  Why,  what  would 
the  unfortunate  islanders  make  of  such  a 
book  if  they  read  it  straight  through,  a 
chapter  at  a  time  r  Yet  this  is  how  many 
people  read  the  Bible.  They  go  on  from 
the  last  chapter  of  Daniel  to  the  first  chapter 
of  Hosea,  without  thinking  or  knowing  that 
Hosea  has  to  do  with  a  period  250  years 
older  than  the  period  of  Daniel ;  or  from 
Acts  xxviii.,  when  St.  Paul  was  at  Rome, 
to  Rom.  i.,  written  some  years  before  he 
went  there.  And  yet  they  do  get  good 
out  of  it  ;  and  the  reason  is  that  after  all, 
notwithstanding  the  different  writers  of  the 
books,  and  the  different  people  they  were 
written  for,  and  the  different  periods  when 
they  were  written,  it  is  all  God's  Sacred 
Book,  and  it  "  prospers  in  the  tiling  whereto 
He  sent  it."  It  fact  you  may  read  it  any- 
where, and  in  any  order,  and  it  will  be  pro- 
fitable to  the  seeking  soul. 

5.  But    if  you  really  want    to  understand 


190    THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

the  Bible  and  become  interested  in  it,  you 
must  take  one  Book  at  a  time  ;  and  generally 
it  is  well  to  read  it  through  (unless  it  is  very 
long)  at  one  sitting,  and  then  go  back  and 
read  it  again  more  slowly  and  carefully.  If 
it  is  one  of  the  Epistles,  you  will  want  to 
know  who  wrote  it,  and  to  whom  it  was 
written,  and  why  it  was  written.  And  you 
will  compare  any  other  parts  of  Scripture 
which  have  to  do  with  the  same  place  and 
time.  For  instance,  the  two  Epistles  to 
the  Thessalonians  can  scarcely  be  understood 
without  reading  the  17th  and  i8th  chapters 
of  the  Acts  ;  and  the  Prophecy  of  Haggai 
throws  great  light  on  the  Book  of  Ezra.  In 
cases  like  these,  your  Reference  Bible  will 
be  a  great  help.^ 

6.  In  reading  the  Four  Gospels,  which  are 
the  most  important  of  all  the  Books,  and 
which  all  four  relate  to  one  subject,  there 
are  two  ways  of  studying  them,  {a)  It  is 
good  to  read  any  one  of  them  entirely  by 
itself,  without  referring  to  the  others.  St. 
Mark,   for   instance,   which   is    the   shortest, 

*  In  Mr.  Wilkinson's  Systematic  Scripture  Study ^ 
there  are  excellent  examples  of  this  kind  of  reading, 
the  illustrations  being  Galatians  and  Hebrews. 


ABOUT  READING  THE  BIBLE     191 

can  be  read  right  through  aloud  in  an  hour 
or  two,  and  is  wonderfully  interesting  as  a 
picture  of  our  Lord's  active  ministry,  [i?) 
But  it  is  necessary  also  to  read  them  all  four 
together ;  and  although  St.  John  is  very 
different  from  the  other  three,  yet  it  often 
gives  us  just  the  information  we  want  to 
make  the  others  clear.  Numbers  of  people, 
learned  and  unlearned,  have  done  this,  and 
have  been  perfectly  fascinated  by  the  study. 
The  more  they  look  into  the  Gospels,  the 
more  they  find  in  them. 

7.  But  although  the  true  way  to  under- 
stand the  Bible  is  to  read  a  Book  at  a  time, 
there  are  other  ways  that  are  also  interesting 
and  profitable.  You  might  take  a  period, 
such  as  the  Reign  of  Ahab,  or  the  Captivity 
in  Babylon,  which  would  require  you  to  look 
at  more  books  than  one  ;  for  instance,  on  the 
Captivity,  besides  Kings  and  Chronicles  and 
Ezra,  you  must  look  at  Jeremiah  and  Ezekiel 
and  Daniel.  It  is  good  also  to  trace  out  the 
lives  of  the  great  men  ;  and  sometimes,  in 
order  to  do  this,  you  must  skip  chapters  here 
and  there,  and  also  turn  from  book  to  book. 
For  instance,  to  work  out  the  Life  of  King 
David  vou  must  look  at  the  Books  of  Samuel 


192     THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

and  Kings  and  Chronicles  and  some  of  the 
Psalms.  For  the  Life  of  Isaiah  you  must 
compare  the  Book  of  his  Prophecies  with 
Kings  and  Chronicles.  The  Life  of  St. 
Peter  is  particularly  interesting  when  you 
put  together  all  the  scattered  notices  of  him 
in  the  Gospels  and  Acts  and  the  Epistle  to 
the  Galatians  and  his  own  Epistles.  And 
for  the  Life  of  St.  Paul  you  must  begin  with 
certain  passages  in  Philippians  and  Galatians 
before  you  go  to  the  Acts.  Then  again, 
you  may  take  particular  topics,  and  find  out 
all  that  the  Bible  says  about  them.  For 
example,  Pride  and  Humility,  for  which  the 
Book  of  Proverbs,  and  the  reference  columns 
there,  will  be  your  chief  guide  ;  or  Faith, 
starting  from  Heb.  xi.  ;  or  Angels ;  or 
Children  ;  or  the  Palm-tree  and  the  Olive- 
tree  ;  or  Sowing  and  Reaping.  Another 
very  interesting  study  is  to  find  out  in  the 
New  Testament  the  quotations  from  the 
Old  Testament,  about  which  I  spoke  in  our 
third  chapter.  Out  of  66  chapters  in  the 
Book  of  Isaiah,  50  are  quoted  in  the  New 
Testament ;  and  more  than  half  of  the 
Psalms.       And     some    passages    are     quoted 


ABOUT  READING  THE  BIBLE     193 

more  than  once ;  one,  Isa.  vi.  9,  10,  six 
times.  It  is  curious  to  find  that  half  of  the 
9th  verse  of  the  69th  Psalm  is  quoted  by  St. 
John,  and  the  other  half  by  St.  Paul.  You 
might  look  these  out. 

Now  whatever  plan  of  reading  the  Bible 
you  may  choose,  there  are  several  things  you 
must  remember,  in  order  to  avoid  falling 
into  mistakes.  I  am  going  to  tell  you  some 
of  these. 

1.  Many  Bibles  have  what  are  called  head- 
lines— sentences  at  the  top  of  the  pages  in- 
dicating the  subjects  of  the  pages  ;  and  some 
have  a  summary  of  contents  in  small  type  at 
the  head  of  each  chapter.  Remember  that 
these  are  not  Holy  Scripture ;  they  were 
done  by  men  in  these  later  times  who  pre- 
pared the  Bible  for  the  printers.  Sometimes 
they  are  useful ;  sometimes  they  are  mis- 
leading ;  but  any  way  they  are  not  part  of 
God's  Book. 

2.  Remember  that  the  Books  of  the  Bible 
were  not  written  in  chapters  and  verses.  I 
told  you  before  how  these  divisions  came  to 
be  made.  They  are  very  useful  to  refer  to  ; 
but  you  should  often  read  from  a  Paragraph 

N 


194    THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

Bible,     in     order     to     understand     the     real 
meaning  better.^ 

3.  Observe  what  the  italic-type  used  for 
some  of  the  words  means.  If  you  see  italic 
letters  in  any  other  book,  or  in  a  newspaper 
or  magazine,  you  know  that  the  words  so 
printed  are  specially  important,  and  that 
the  writer  lays  particular  stress  on  them. 
But  in  the  Bible  the  meaning  is  the  oppo- 
site of  this.  The  words  in  italics  stand  for 
words  not  in  the  original  Hebrew  or  Greek, 
and  are  added  in  the  English  Version  to 
make  the  sense  clearer.  Thus,  if  you  look 
at  the  ist  chapter  of  St.  Luke,  you  find  in 
verse  12  the  words  "Zacharias  saw  /?/w," 
with  "  htm "  in  italics ;  which  shows  that 
the  Greek  is  simply  *^  saw  "  ;  but  it  is  evident 
that  "  him "  is  meant,  so  it  is  added  in  this 
way.  And  in  ver.  25  of  the  same  chapter 
we  find  the  words  "  looked  on  me^^^  with 
"  me "  in  italics,  showing  that  the  Greek  is 
simply  "  looked  on  "  ;    but  evidently  "  me  " 

^  The  Revised  Version  is  of  course  printed  in 
paragraphs.  But  there  were  Paragraph  Bibles 
long  before  that.  A  beautiful  pocket  Bible  in  para- 
graphs, published  by  the  R.T.S.,  was  given  to  me 
as  far  back  as  1852. 


ABOUT  READING  THE  BIBLE     195 

is    meant,    and    is    therefore    added     in    the 
English. 

4.  Many  Bibles  have  dates  at  the  top  of 
the  page,  showing  when  the  events  recorded 
on  that  page  took  place,  or  when  the  page  is 
supposed  to  have  been  written.  These  dates 
were  settled  by  a  learned  Irish  Archbishop, 
Dr.  Ussher,  in  the  days  of  Charles  I.  and 
Cromwell.  In  the  New  Testament,  and  in 
the  later  part  of  the  Old  Testament,  you  may 
generally  rely  on  them  ;  but  not  in  the  earlier 
part  of  the  Old  Testament,  as  discoveries 
made  since  Ussher's  time  have  shown  that  the 
dates  of  Abraham  and  Moses  are  uncertain, 
and  it  is  probable  that  the  Deluge,  and  the 
events  before  the  Deluge,  are  very  much 
older  than  he  reckoned. 

5.  People  often  make  curious  mistakes  in 
quoting  Scripture.  It  is  often  said  that  since 
Adam's  Fall,  men  have  had  to  get  their  living 
"by  the  sweat  of  their  brow,"  but  these 
words  are  not  in  the  Bible  at  all.  The 
expression  in  Gen.  iii.  is  "  the  sweat  of  thy 
face."  Again,  it  is  often  said  that  God  is 
"able  to  do  exceeding  abundantly  above  all 
that  we  can  ask  or  think."  This  may  be 
true,  but  it  is  not  in  the  Bible.     In  Eph.  iii. 


196    THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

20  there  is  no  "  can."  It  is  "  all  that  we  ask 
or  think,"  that  is,  all  that  we  do  ask  or  think. 
Again,  some  words  in  Phil.  ii.  13  are  often 
quoted  as  if  they  meant  that  our  salvation  is 
to  be  worked  out  by  ourselves  ;  but  people 
who  do  so  leave  out  the  first  part  of  the 
verse.  St.  Paul  is  telling  the  Philippians  that 
they  need  not  trouble  because  he  is  absent 
from  them.  Whatever  "  working  out  "  they 
could  do  in  his  presence  they  could  do  equally 
well  in  his  absence,  became  God  was  working 
in  them  I 

6.  In  reading  the  Old  Testament,  you 
must  remember  that  in  those  old  days  men 
did  not  know  all  that  we  know.  Things 
seemed  right  to  them  which  we  now  know 
are  not  right.  We  are  not  to  condemn  them, 
for  God  did  not.  He  dealt  with  them  as  we 
sometimes  deal  with  children.  Even  young 
children  know  something  about  right  and 
wrong,  but  they  do  not  understand  all  that 
their  fathers  and  mothers  understand  ;  and  in 
some  ways  the  people  of  the  earlier  ages  of 
the  world  were  like  children.  For  example, 
Jacob  had  four  wives,  and  David  had  a  great 
many ;  and  you  read  about  this  without  any 
word  in  the  Old  Testament  to   tell  you  it 


ABOUT  READING  THE  BIBLE     197 

was  wrong.  Jesus  Christ  and  His  Apostles 
made  it  clear  to  us.  In  Matt.  v.  you  will 
find  Christ  referring  to  some  of  the  old  laws 
and  customs,  and  then  saying,  "  But  I  say 
unto  you  .  .  ." — something  different.  There 
are  a  few  verses  in  some  of  the  Psalms  which 
we  always  wish  we  had  not  got  to  sing, 
where  the  Psalmist  hopes  that  great  calamities 
will  fall  on  his  enemies.  We  must  not  be 
hard  on  him  :  he  did  not  know  the  wonder- 
ful law  of  love  and  forgiveness  which  Christ 
and  His  Apostles  taught  ;  and  we  should 
remember,  too,  that  he  looked  on  his  enemies 
as  God's  enemies,  and  therefore  desired  and 
rejoiced  in  their  destruction.  It  is  remarkable 
that  one  of  the  hardest  Psalms,  the  69th,  is 
quoted  as  Scripture  in  the  New  Testament. 
I  mentioned  its  9th  verse  only  a  page  or  two 
back. 

7.  Do  not  be  surprised  if  you  cannot 
understand  everything.  There  is  enough 
simple  teaching  in  the  Bible  for  all  our  need, 
but  there  is  a  great  deal  that  learned  men 
are  always  studying  and  yet  never  feeling 
that  they  have  learned  everything.  There 
are  difficult  passages  which  a  Commentary 
will  explain  ;  and  there  arc  some  which  you 


198     THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

might  feel  you  do  not  fully  understand  if  you 
had  looked  at  a  dozen  commentaries.  But 
really  we  ought  not  to  expect  to  understand 
all  about  God.  How  could  we  ?  God  has 
given  us  wonderful  minds,  to  understand 
wonderful  things  ;  but  the  Almighty  Creator 
and  Preserver  and  King — how  can  we  under- 
stand all  about  Him  ?  Never  be  ashamed  or 
afraid  to  say,  "  1  don't  know."  It  is  easy  to 
ask  hard  questions  about  things  in  the  Bible 
which  no  one  can  answer.  But  God  has 
graciously  condescended  to  picture  Himself 
to  us  as  if  He  were  a  man^  so  that  we  may 
understand  a  little.  We  read  of  His  Face, 
His  Eyes,  His  Ears,  His  Arm,  His  Hand,  His 
Feet ;  of  His  coming,  and  going,  and  walk- 
ing, and  laughing,  and  looking  to  see  ;  of  His 
"  smelling  a  sweet  savour  "  ;  of  His  "  repent- 
ing "  ;  of  His  swearing  solemn  oaths.  We 
are  not  to  take  these  expressions  literally  : 
they  are  pictures  or  representations,  to  give 
us  some  little  idea  of  what  the  great  God  is 
like.  They  are  called  "  anthropomorphisms," 
from  Greek  words  meaning  "  in  the  form  of 
a  rnan." 

8.  There  are  also  a  great  many  other  illus- 
trations or  figures  or  similitudes  in  the  Bible. 


ABOUT  READING  THE  BIBLE     199 

Our  Lord  Jesus  Christ  is  called  the  Word, 
the  Sun,  the  Rock,  the  Vine  ;  and  the  Holy 
Spirit  is  likened  to  the  wind,  the  fire,  the 
dew,  the  living  water.  This  is  what  is  called 
figurative  language,  and  you  must  be  careful 
how  you  explain  it.  A  particular  figure,  for 
instance,  does  not  always  mean  the  same 
thing.  Thus,  leaven  sometimes  stands  for 
what  is  evil,  as  in  Luke  xii.  i  and  i  Cor. 
V.  8  ;  and  some  people  have  therefore  sup- 
posed that  the  Parable  of  the  Leaven,  in 
Matt,  xiii.,  must  refer  to  the  spread  of  evil. 
But  that  does  not  follow.  Satan  is  also  called 
a  lion  (i  Pet.  v.  8),  but  that  does  not  prove 
that  a  lion  is  always  a  figure  of  what  is 
dangerous,  for  our  Lord  Himself  is  called  a 
Lion  (Rev.  v.  5).  In  particular,  you  must 
not  build  a  doctrine  upon  a  figure.  Some 
have  spoken  of  man's  heart  being  a  vessel, 
and  the  blood  of  Jesus  Christ  as  a  stream 
flowing  through  it  and  cleansing  it ;  there- 
fore, said  they,  there  can  be  no  sin  left  in 
the  heart.  But  there  is  no  literal  vessel, 
and  no  literal  stream.  These  are  figures. 
The  precious  blood  of  Christ  does  atone  for 
our  sin,  and  then  we  love  Him  and  turn 
from    sin,  so    we  are    doubly  cleansed  ;    but 


200    THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

sinful  tendencies  are  in    all  hearts    still,  and 
will  be  till  we  die. 

9.  You  must  not  fall  into  the  mistake  of 
quoting  every  word  in  the  Bible  as  the  Word 
of  God.  The  whole  Bible  is  in  a  true  sense 
the  Word  of  God,  because  the  whole  Bible 
contains  His  revelations  and  messages.  But, 
as  you  know,  the  Bible  records  many  things 
said  by  bad  men  ;  and  of  course  they  are  not 
God's  words.  Pharaoh  said,  "Who  is  the 
Lord  r  I  know  not  the  Lord."  The  Phari- 
sees said  of  Jesus,  "  This  man  blasphemeth." 
Of  course  you  would  not  think  of  these  as 
God's  words.  But  there  are  other  places 
where  you  might  make  mistakes.  In  the 
Book  of  Job  there  are  long  speeches  by  Job's 
friends.  Some  things  they  said  are  right, 
and  some  are  wrong  ;  but  neither  the  right 
nor  the  wrong  are  God's  words.  Do  you 
say  it  would  have  been  better  if  all  the 
Bible  had  been  good  words  from  God  Him- 
self ?  But,  as  I  have  said  before,  God  knows 
best,  and  it  is  our  business  to  take  His  blessed 
Book  in  the  form  in  which  He  has  been 
pleased  to  give  it  to  us.  So  it  is  important, 
when  a  verse  of  Scripture  is  quoted,  to  ask. 


ABOUT  READING  THE  BIBLE    201 

Who  said  that  ?  Suppose  a  man  said  to 
you,  "  The  Bible  says,  There  is  no  God  "  ; 
you  would  be  indignant,  and  contradict  him. 
Yet  it  is  true  ;  those  words  are  in  the  Bible. 
But  look  at  the  14th  Psalm,  where  they 
occur,  and  you  will  see  how  necessary  it  is 
to  quote  the  whole  of  a  text,  and  not  only 
part  of  it.  So  again,  I  have  heard  it  said 
that  the  Bible  tells  us  that  "  money  is  the 
root  of  all  evil."  Well,  the  words  are  there, 
in  I  Tim.  vi.  10  ;  but  if  you  look  at  that 
verse  you  will  find  it  is  "  The  love  of  money 
is  the  root  of  all  evil"  (in  R.V.,  "a  root  of 
all  kinds  of  evil "). 

10.  In  reading  the  Prophets,  remember 
that  most  of  what  we  call  their  "  prophecies  " 
were  reaWy  preachings  addressed  to  the  people 
among  whom  they  lived  ;  and  you  should 
try  and  make  out  what  they  meant  to  say 
to  those  people.  There  are  some  very  cheer- 
ing words  in  the  40th  chapter  of  Isaiah,  which 
perhaps  you  have  heard  sung  to  beautiful 
music  by  Handel-— "  Comfort  ye,  comfort  ye 
My  people,"  &c.  Now  these  words,  and 
those  that  follow,  were  meant  to  comfort  and 
cheer  the  people  of  Israel  when  in  captivity 


202    THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

in  Babylon  ;  and  you  should  read  the  pas- 
sage thinking  how  sorely  they  needed  such  a 
message,  and  how  it  would  encourage  them. 
But  I  do  not  mean  that  we  are  not  to  take  it 
also  for  our  own  comfort.  Certainly  we  are. 
God  inspired  the  prophets  to  speak  His  words 
to  the  Jews  of  that  day,  and  yet  words  which 
would  be  a  blessing  to  all  His  people  in  after 
ages.  Sometimes  the  prophets  knew  that 
they  were  speaking  and  writing  what  would 
be  more  fully  understood  in  after  times.  See 
what  St.  Peter  tells  us  of  this  in  his  ist 
Epistle  (i.  10-12). 

II.  Once  more:  you  will  sometimes  find 
passages  of  Scripture  which  seem  to  contra- 
dict other  passages.  Be  quite  sure  that  they 
never  do  really  ! — but  often  it  requires  careful 
study  to  see  how  they  fit  in,  and  in  some 
cases  it  has  not  pleased  God  to  show  us  clearly 
how  they  do  fit  in.  Thus,  in  John  vi.  37 
the  Lord  Jesus  says,  "  Him  that  cometh  to 
Me  I  will  in  no  wise  cast  out,"  which  is  a 
gracious  word  for  everybody.  In  the  same 
verse  He  says  what  seems  to  limit  the  pro- 
mise as  if  it  were  only  for  some  ;  while  in  the 
chapter  next   before  He  says  most  solemnly 


ABOUT  READING  THE  BIBLE     203 

that  if  men  do  not  come  to  Him  it  is  the 
fault  of  their  own  will  (v.  40).  Do  not 
puzzle  about  this  :  you  never  can  explain  the 
difference  fully  ;  nobody  can  ;  but  be  sure 
you  "  come  to  Him "  yourselves.  Then 
again,  many  people  are  troubled  because  they 
think  St.  James  contradicts  St.  Paul  about 
faith,  and  even  say  that  he  wrote  on  purpose 
to  correct  what  St.  Paul  had  said.  Now  it 
is  almost  certain  that  St.  James  wrote  his 
Epistle  some  years  before  St.  Paul  wrote  to 
the  Romans  and  the  Galatians  1 — and  the 
"faith"  which  St.  James  says  is  no  use  is 
not  the  true  faith  which  St.  Paul  tells  us 
"  worketh  by  love  "  (Gal.  v.  6).  One  other 
case  : — It  is  very  important  to  remember  that 
the  words  "  salvation  "  and  "  saved  "  are  used 
in  Scripture  in  three  senses.  Thus  St.  Paul 
tells  the  Ephesians  that  they  "  have  been 
saved"  (Eph.  ii.  5,  8,  R.V.),  and,  writing  to 
Timothy,  he  says  God  "saved  us"  (i  Tim. 
i.  9).  But  he  also  speaks  of  "  salvation  "  as 
a  thing  going  on  (i  Cor.  xv.  2  ;  Phil.  ii.  12), 
and  also  of  its  being  something  yet  to  come 
(Rom.  V.  9,  xiii.  11  ;  Phil.  i.  19).  So  we 
have  past,  present,  and  future  salvation  ;  and 


204    THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

it  is  quite  right  to  say  "  We  are  saved,"  and 
"We  are  being  saved,"  and  "We  shall  be 
saved." 

I  want  you  to  learn,  and  remember,  the 
words  of  the  Sixth  Article  of  our  Church  of 
England  : — "  Holy  Scripture  containeth  all 
things  necessary  to  salvation  ;  so  that  what- 
soever is  not  read  therein,  nor  may  be  proved 
thereby,  is  not  to  be  required  of  any  man, 
that  it  should  be  believed  as  an  article  of  the 
Faith,  or  be  thought  requisite  or  necessary  to 
salvation." 


And  now  I  have  come  to  the  end  of  my 
book.  I  do  hope  that  it  may  teach  you 
to  love  the  Bible,  and  praise  God  for  it. 
Perhaps  you  may  not  be  able  to  study  it 
thoroughly  in  the  ways  I  have  been  suggest- 
ing in  this  last  chapter.  Well,  never  mind. 
Do  what  you  can,  and  the  Lord  will  be 
pleased.  But  even  if  you  arc  quite  unable, 
for  any  reason,  to  study  it  at  all  properly, 
be  sure  and  read  it,  day  by  day,  regularly, 
reverently,  humbly,  teachably,  asking  your 
Heavenly  Father  to  "open  your  eyes,"  that 


ABOUT  READING  THE  BIBLE     205 

you  may  "  behold  wondrous  things "  in  its 
sacred  pages.  If  you  cannot  always  stop  to 
find  out  what  Moses  meant  for  the  Israelites 
in  the  wilderness,  or  what  Isaiah  meant  for 
the  Jews  in  Hezekiah's  day,  or  what  St.  Paul 
meant  for  the  Corinthians  or  the  Thessa- 
lonians,  you  can  always  bow  your  head  and 
ask.  What  does  my  God  and  Father  mean 
me  to  learn  by  this  passage  ?  Then  you  will 
find  that  although  you  read  much  which  you 
cannot  understand  you  will  love  the  Bible 
more  and  more.  You  will  in  your  heart  sing 
the  old  children's  hymn, — 

Holy  Bible  !    Book  Divine  ! 
Precious  treasure,  thou  art  mine ! 

You    will    realize    the    truth    of    another 
hymn, — 

Lord,  Thy  Word  abideth, 
And  our  footsteps  guideth  ; 
Who  its  truth  believeth 
Light  and  joy  receiveth. 

And  you  will    love    to    pray   the    familiar 
prayer, — 

Blessed   Lord,  Who  hast   caused   all  Holy 
Scriptures  to   be  written    for    our    learning ; 


2o6    THE  STORY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

grant  that  we  may  in  such  wise  hear  them, 
read,  mark,  learn,  and  inwardly  digest  them, 
that  by  patience,  and  comfort  of  Thy  holy 
Word,  we  may  embrace  and  ever  hold  fast 
the  blessed  hope  of  everlasting  life,  which 
Thou  hast  given  us  in  our  Saviour  Jesus 
Christ.     Amen. 


Index  of  Proper  Names 


Abkdnego,  34 

Abraham,  5,  10,  29 

Abu  Rumi,  142 

Abyssinia,  141,  142 

Acts,  Book  of,  9,  10,  II,  12,  36, 

37.  42,  43.  51.   55.  57.  79- 

119, 122,  128,  129,  173,  189, 

190,  192 
Acts  of  Solomon,  Book  of,  ig 
Adam,  195 
Addison,  172 
Afghans,  154,  180 
Africa,   25,    46,    70,    71,    136, 

138,  148 
Ahab,  191 
Aidan,  St.,  74 
Ainu,  182 

A  Kempis,  Thomas,  86 
Alexandria,  37,  38,  39,  56 
Alexandrian  MS.,  63,  64,  65 
Alford,  Dean,  120 
Alfred,  King,  29,  75,  77 
Amaziah,  23 
Ambrose,  St.,  168 
America,  North,  46,  120,  133, 

146,  177 
America,  South,  133 
American  Missions,  137 
Amharic  language,  142,  143 
Anglo-Saxon,  42,  73,  74,  75, 

n 

Angus,  Dr.,  57,  120 


Antioch  (in  Pisidia),  42 

Antioch  (in  Syria),  56 

Apocrypha,  34,  35,  38, 112-114 

ApoUos,  45 

Arabia,  136 

Arabic    language,    136,    137, 

139,  140,  142,  145 
Aramaic  language,  29,  30,  32, 

SI.  55.  58 
Armagh,  74 
Armenian  language,  70 
Arnold,  Dr.,  170 
Asa,  23,  137 
Asaph,  20 

Asia,  25,  69,  143,  156 
Asia  Minor,  35,  138 
Athanasius,  St.,  31-112 
Athens,  42,  43 
Augustine,   St.  (Hippo),  168, 

169 
Augustine,  St.   (Canterbury), 

74 

Babylon,  7,  29,  34,  191 
Bacon,  Roger,  88 
Bacon,  Lord,  165 
Balliol  College,  77 
Bangor,  74 
Barabbas,  125 
Bainabas,  45 
Baruch,  20 
Bechuana,  148 


207 


2o8     INDEX   OF   PROPER   NAMES 


Recket,  T.  k,  169 

Bede,  Ven.,  76 

Benedicite,  34 

Benedict-US,  91,  108 

Bengal,  137,  143 

Berea,    Bereans,   37,   42,    43, 

44,  173 
Bethlehem,  71,  129 
Bible  Society,  B,  and  F.,  139- 

160 
Bible  Society,  American,  150 
Bible    Societies,    Scotch    and 

Irish,  140,  150 
Bishops'  Bible,  108-110 
Boston,  134,  177 
Boughton,  Lady  J.,  83 
Boxer  riots,  179 
Brady  (Tate  and),  171 
Bright,  John,  165 
Britain,  54,  73 
British  Columbia,  179,  182 
Buchanan,  Dr.  C,  70 
Bulgarian,  87 
Burke,  E,,  165 
Burmah,  154 

CiEDMON,  74 

Caesarea,  47 

Cairns,  Earl,  166 

Cajetan,  Cardinal,  113 

Calcutta,  143 

Cambridge,  93,  100,  116,  138, 

139,  142,  149,  186 
Canon,  27,  28,  33,  34,  35,  38, 

39,  57,  112,  113 
Canterbury,   Archbishops   of, 

74,  82,  83,  95,  104,  163 
Capellini,  174 

Carey,  William,  137,  138,  143 
Carlyle,  T.  ,164 
Caxton,  91 
Celebes,  155 
Ceylon,  135 
Chaldasa,  29 
Charles  I.,  63,  84,  195 


Charles  II.,  107 

Charles  V. ,  102 

Chaucer,  188 

Chesterfield,  Lord,  189 

Chicago,  121 

China,  70,  143,  144,  178,  179 

Chinese  language,  144,  145 

Chrischona,  St.,  143 

Chronicles,   Books  of,  7,   18, 

19,  22,  23,  191,  192 
Church    Nlissionary    Society, 

135,  138,  140,  142,  150,  188 
Claude,  Bp.,  87 
Clement,  St.,  56,  57,  63 
Cluny  Monastery,  85 
Colet,  Dean,  loi 
Cologne,  loi 

Colossians,  Ep.  to,  129,  132 
Columba,  St.,  74 
Columbus,  133,  169 
Complutensian  Polyglot,  92 
Constant! ne,  59 
Constantinople,  53,  63,  88,  89 
Coptic  language,  70 
Corinth,  42,  46,  56 
Corinthians,    Ep.   to,    9,    11, 

27,  43,   46,   no,    130,    132, 

199,  203 
Cotton,  Sir  R.,  76 
Coverdale,  Miles,    104,     105, 

107,  IIS 
Cranmer,  Abp.,  104,  105,  io8 
Crispin  and  Crispinian,  167 
Cromwell,  Thos. ,  105 
Crowther,  Bp. ,  148 
Cuthbert,  St.,  77 
Cyril  of  Jerusalem,  112 
Cyril  (Thessalonica),  87 


Danes,  Danish,   75,  96,  07, 

135 
Daniel,  Book  of,  27,  30,  34, 

189,  191 
Dante,  162 


INDEX   OF   PROPER   NAMES    209 


David,    20,    22,    24,    31,    119, 

191,  196 
Deborah,  21 
Delhi,  175 
Deluge,  195 
Denmark,  see  Danes 
Deuteronomy,  17,  18 
Dickens,  C.,  164 
Diocletian,  59 
Domesday  Book,  188 
Douay  Version,  109 
Dublin,  140 
Durham,  75 
Dutch,  8g,  92,  94,  96 

Eadfrith,  75 

Ecclesiasticus,  Book  of,  34 

Edersheim,  Dr.  A.,  178 

Edinburgh,  140 

Edward  III.,  'J^ 

Edward  VI.,  171 

Edward  VII.,  163 

Egypt,  4.  35.  59.  136 

Elijah,  22,  128 

Eliot,  John,  134 

Elisha,  22,  128 

Elizabeth,  Queen,    108,    114, 

169 
EUicott,  Bp. ,  120,  187 
Elzevir,  94 
English  language,  25,  29,  31, 

41,  42,  65,  96,  99 
Ephesus,  46,  S3,  58 
Ephesians,  Ep.    to,   46,    103, 

123,  195,  203 
Ephraem,  64 
Erasmus,  89,  93,  94,  95,  100, 

lOI 

Erse  language,  73,  140 

Eskimo,  147 

^sther.  Book  of,  18 

Etienne,  94,  95 

Ethiopia   language,   70,    141, 

142 
Eusebius,  112 


Exodus,  17,  131 

Ezekiel,  191 

Ezra,  18,  36,  30,  190,  191 

Florence,  72,  89 
Foochow  dialect,  146 
France,   French,   31,   38,    59, 

71.  89,  94,  96,  140,  145.  151 
Francis,  St.,  of  Assisi,  78 
Fuller,  T.,  84 
Fust,  90 
Fyson,  Bp.,  150 

Gad,  Book  of,  19,  26 

Gaelic,  140 

Galatians,  Ep.  to,  12,  27,  123, 

192,  203 
Gaidiner,  Capt.  A.,  170 
Gaul,  71 
Gehenna,  127 
Genesis,  8,  14,  15,  16,  17,  85, 

104,  132,  159,  195 
Geneva,  io8,  no,  in,  114 
George  II.,  84 
Gerhard,  89 
Gerizim,  Mt.,  33 
German  language,  89,  96,  97, 

107,  140 
Germans,   Germany,    89,    91, 

loi,  102,  13s,  140,  14s 
Gideon,  21 

Girdlestone,  Canon,  188 
Gladstone,  Mr.,  165 
Gobat,  Bp. ,  142 
Goldwin  Smith,  Prof.,  90 
Gospel,  42,  43,  47,  48 
Gospels,  Four,  28,  40,  48,  52, 

55.  57.  75'  190.  192 

Goths,  71 

Great  Bible,  106-108 

Greece,  35,  42,  89 

Greek  language,  2,  9,  13,  17, 
25,  27,  30,  36,  37,  38,  41, 
48.  50.  51.  55.  58,  61,  68, 
69,  88,  89,  92,  122-131 

O 


210    INDEX   OF  PROPER   NAMES 


Green,  Dr.  S.  G. ,  57,  120 
Green's  History,  19 
Grey,  Lady  Jane,  169 
Grierson,  Dr.,  157 
Grosteste,  Bp. ,  88 
Gutenberg,  90 


Hades,  127 
Hadfield,  Bp. ,  176,  177 
Haggai,  190 
Handel,  201 
Hannington,  Bp. ,  170 
Havergal,  F.  R. ,  107 
Hebrew  language,  28,  29,  30, 

31.  32.  33.  36,  38,  58.  64,  88, 

89,  91,  142 
Hebrews,  Ep.  to,  10,  35,  45, 

62,  109, 123,  128,  192 
Heman,  20 
Henry  VHI.,   loi,  102,   104, 

105 
Hepburn,  Dr.,  150 

Herford,  78 

Hermas,  Shepherd  of,  57 

Hervey,  Bp.  Lord  A.,  120 

Hezekiah,  22,  23 

Hill,  D.,  178 

Hindi  language,  153,  158 

Hindustani  language,  153 

Hodgkin,  Dr. ,  76 

Holbein,  105 

Holy  Spirit,  6,  7,  40,  41, 

46,  SI.  57 
Homer,  89,  162 
Hooper,  Bp. ,  169 
Hooper,  Dr.,  158 
Hort,  Dr.,  119 
Hosea,  189 
Hsi,  Pastor,  178 
Hugo,  Cardinal,  95 
Hume's  History,  19 
Hungarian  language,  96 
Hus,  John,  169 


Icelandic  language,  96 
Ignatius,  St.,  56 
Imad-ud-din,  Dr.,  175 
India,   4,  70,    133,   135,   137, 

143,  152,  157 
Indians,  Red,  133,  134,  139, 

146,  147,  179 
lona,  74 

Ireland,  73,  74,  140 
Irenseus,  St.,  56 
Isaiah,  8,  131,  132,  159,  192, 

193,  201 
Italy,  35,  59,  71.  89,  173.  ^74 
Italian  language,  96 


Jacob,  159,  196 
Jacob,  Bp.,  158 
James,   Ep.    of,  12,   45,  123, 

203 
James  I.,  28,  114,  115,  ii6, 

123 
Japan,    Japanese,    150,    177, 

178,  179,  182 
Jarrow,  74,  76 
Jasher,  Book  of,  19 
Jehoshaphat,  23 
Jeremiah,  20,  30,  191 
Jerome,  St.,  3,  60,  71,  73,  74, 

112,  113,  114,  121 

Jerome  of  Prague,  169 

Jerusalem,  42,  44,  53 

Jesus  Christ,  2,   5,  6,   11, 

29,  30,  40,  43,  44,  46,  54, 

55.  166 
Jews,  5,  7.  9.  27.  29.  30.  31. 

32.  33.  34.  36.  37.  38,  41. 

42,  43,  44,  48,  51,  91 
Job,  200 
John,  St.,  50,  53 
John,  Gospel  of,  6,  8,  ii,  12, 

13.  33.  53.  54.  58,  59.  63, 
70,  76,  87,  122,  125,  126, 

137.  139.  146,  147.  149.  19I1 

202 


INDEX  OF  PROPER   NAMES     211 


John,  Eps.  of,  45,  54,  67,  69, 

93-  122 
John  the  Baptist,  60 
Joseph,  104.  159 
Josephus,  28,  34 
Joshua,  128 
Joshua,   Book  of,  18,  ig,  27, 

132 
Josiah,  23 
Jotham,  23 
Jowett,  W.,  142 
Judas  Iscariot,  124 
Jude,  St.,  Ep.  of,  45 
Judges,  Book  of,  8,  21,  22 
Justin  Martyr,  56,  112 

Kethe,  172 

Kings,  Books  of,  22,  23,  27, 

154, 163,  191,  192 
King's  printers,  116,  186 
Kitto,  John,  140 
Korah,  Sons  of,  20 
Koran,  4,  136,  175 
Krapf,  Dr.,  142 
Krishna,  157 
Kwa-gutl  language,  182 

Lambeth  Palace,  83 
Langton,  Archbp.  S.,  95 
Latin  language,  2,  3,  25,  30, 

41,  42,  55,  60,  61,  70,  71, 

86 
Lazarus,  52 
Lee,  Prof.  S. ,  139 
Leviticus,  17 
Lightfoot,  Bp. ,  120 
Lindisfarne,  74,  75,  77 
Livingstone,  Dr.,  170 
Lollards,  85 
London,  55,  91 
London    Missionary   Society, 

144 
Loyalty  Islands,  i6o 
Luganda  language,  149,  182 


Luke,  St.,  2,  8,  9,  10,  II,  27, 

45.46,49.  50.  51.  52,  53.  60. 

91,  129,  130,  176,  194,  199 
Luther,    Martin,   96-98,   100. 

113,  169 
Lutterworth,  77,  84 
Lyons,  56,  87 
Lystra,  42 

Macassar  language,  155 
Macaulay,  Lord,  189 
Maccabees,  33,  35 
Mackay,  A.,  149 
Madras,  143,  176 
Magnificat,  91,  108 
Malta,  140 
Manuscripts,  60-69,  89, 93,  94, 

121 
Maori  (N.Z.),  176 
Mark,  St.,  47,  48,  50,  52,  55, 

122,  125,  130,  190 
Martyn,  H. ,  138,  170 
Mary,  Virgin,  50,  51,  91 
Mary,  Queen,  105,  108 
Mary,  Queen  of  Scots,  169 
Massoretes,  32 
Matthew,  St.,  10,  11,  48,  50, 

52,  79,  104,  126,  127,  149, 

175,  179,  182,  197 
Matthew's  Bible,  105,  no 
Mayence,  90 
Melanchthon,  89,  169 
Melanesia,  147,  155 
Meshach,  34 
Methodius,  87 
Micah,  8 
Milan,  91 
Milne,  Dr.,  144 
Milton,  John,  172,  188 
Moffat,  R.,  148 
Mohammedans,   4,    88,    136, 

153.  154 
Mohawk,  139 
Mongolian  language,  144 
Monte  Corvino,  John  de,  144 


212    INDEX   OF   PROPER   NAMES 


Moravians,  87 
More,  Sir  T. ,  169 
Morrison,  R.,  144 
Moses,  2,  13,  14,  16,  18,  164 
Murray,  W.,  145 

Nathan,  Book  of,  19,  26 
Nazareth,  2,  41 
Nebuchadnezzar,  34 
Nehemiah,  Book  of,  18,  29 
Nestorians,  69 
New  Testament,  2,  10,  30,  33, 

34.    35.  36,  40-72,  89,    gi, 

93,  94,  loi,  103,  105,   109, 

120-131 
New  Guinea,  155 
New  York,  121 
New  Zealand,  147,  176 
Nicodemus,  52 
Niisima,  177 
Nilkanth,  N. ,  175 
Northumberland,  72,  73,  74 
Nunc  Dimittis,  108 
Numbers,   Book  of,    17,    18, 

164 

Oldcastle,  Sir  J.,  83 

Old  Testament,  2,  9,  10,   11, 

13.  14-39.  40.  42,  56-  57.  58, 
62,  63,  91,  92,  102,  105,  109, 

131 

Origen,  56 

Orme,  77 

Oxford.  77,  89,  93,  100,  116, 

121,  164 
Oxford  Helps,  35,  186 

Palestine,  29,  32,  33,    36, 

38,  41,  42,  50,  51,  136 
Pali,  154 
Paris,  89,  91,  94 
Parker,  Abp. ,  108 
Patagonia,  170 
Patmos,  53 
Patrick,  St.,  73 


Paul,  St.,  6,  8,  9,  27,  30,  36, 

37.  42.  43.  44.  45.  47.    5°. 

SI.  52,  53.56,  57,  119,  123, 

189,  192,  203 
Paul's,  St.,  Cathedral,  102 
Peking,  178 
Pentateuch,    17,    18,   27,  33, 

102,  105 
Perowne,  Bp. ,  120 
Persia,  69,  138 
Penigia,  173 
Peshawar,  180 
Peshitto  Version,  69 
Peter,  St.,  42,  45,  47,  56,  129, 

192 
Peter,  St.,  Eps.  of,  6,  56,  123, 

192,  199,  202 
Petersburg,  St. ,  62 
Pharaoh,  200 
Pharisees,  200 
Philemon,  Ep.  to,  7,  8,  46 
Philippians,  Ep.  to,  46,  no, 

123,  129,  192,  195,  203 
Pilate,  Pontius,  30,  41 
Pilkington,  G. ,  149 
Plato,  89 

Plumptre,  Dean,  120 
Plutscho,  135 
Polish  language,  96 
Polycarp,  St. ,  56 
Polynesia,  147 
Pro'thero,  168 

Proverbs,  Book  of,  8,  20,  192 
Psalms,  The,  3,  4,  20,  24,  25, 

27,  76,  79,  86,  107,  164-172, 

192,  193,  197,  201 
Pushtu  language,  154 
Purvey,  78 


Ram  Chandra,  Prof.,  175 

Rehoboam,  23 

Religious  Tract  Society,  120, 

187,  188,  194 
Reuchlin,  John,  89 


INDEX   OF   PROPER   NAMES     213 


Revelation,   Book  of,   53,   55, 

122,  126,  199 
Rheims  Version,  109 
Richard,  Timothy,  178 
Ridley,  Bp.  N.,  169 
Ridley,  Bp.  W.,  179 
Rogers,  John,  105 
Rome,  46,  51,  62,  91,  174 
Roman  Empire,  36,  41,  42,  52, 

Roman  Christians,  2,  10,  45, 

47,  48,  55,  121,  125 
Roman  Church,  56,  92,  109, 

no,  113,  174 
Roman  type,  37,  146,  147,  149, 

153 
Romans,  Ep.  to,  11,  12,  13, 

46,  86,  126,  158,  168,  189, 

203 
Ruskin,  John,  164,  170 
Russia,  62,  96,  136,  140 
Ruth,  Book  of,  7,  27 

Safdar  Ali,  175 
Samaritans,  33,  52 
Samson,  21 
Samuel,  Books  of,  22,  31,  119, 

163,  191 
Sanskrit  language,  152 
Satan,  199 

Satthianadhan,  W.  T. ,  176 
Schlienz,  140 
Schulze,  135 
Schwarzerd,  89 
Scotland,  Scotch,  74,  119,  145, 

171 
Scripture  Unions,  188 
Scrivener,  Dr.,  119 
Selborne,  Earl  of,  166 
Septuagint  Version,  37,  58,  62, 

92 
Serampore,  137,  143 
Shadrach,  34 
Shakspeare,    162,    164,    165, 

188 


Sheol,  127 

Shepherd  of  Hermas,  57 

Sidonius  ApoUinaris,  167 

Silas,  44 

Sinai,  Mt.,  61 

Sinaitic  MS.,  61,  64,  65 

Slavonic  language,  87 

Smithfield,  83,  105 

Smyrna,  53,  56 

S.P.C.K.,  134-137.  139.  150 

187 
S.P.G.,135,  137 
Solomon,  20 
Solway,  75 
Sophocles,  89 
South,  Dr.,  188 
South  Sea  Islands,   138,  147 

155,  160,  179,  189 
Southwell,  R.,  169 
Spain,  59,  71,  92,  94 
Spanish  language,  96 
Spurgeon,  C.  H.,  183 
Steere,  Bp.,  149 
Stephen,  St.,,  128 
Stephens    (Etienne),    94,   95 

109 
Sternhold,  171,  172 
Stone,  S.  J.,  24 
Strype,  106 
Swahili  language,  149 
Sweden,  71 

Swedish  language,  96,  97 
Syria,  29,  69,  136,  137 
Syriac  language,  25,  69,   70 

142 

Tamil  language,  135,  136 
Targums,  32,  33,  92 
Tate,  Nahum,  171,  172 
Taverner,  108 
Te  Deum,  34 
Tennyson,  A. ,  164 
Thackeray,  W.  M. ,  164 
Theodore,  167 
1  Theophilus,  49,  51 


214    INDEX   OF   PROPER   NAMES 


Theresa,  vSt. ,  169 
Thessalonians,  Ep.  to,  190 
Thessalonica,  42,  87 
Thucydides,  89 
Timothy,  6,  12,  37,  45 
Timothy,  Ep,  to,  6,  12, 13,  52, 

no,  123,  201,  203 
Tinnevelly,  176 
Tischendorf,  51 
Titus,  Ep.  to,  8 
Tokyo,  150 
Toledo,  92 
Toplady,  24 
Toulouse,  86 
Treacle  Bible,  105 
Trent,  Council  of,  113 
Tunstall,  Bp. ,  100,  102,  106 
Turin,  87,  174 
Turkey,  Turks,  4,  88,  150 
Turkish  language,  140 
Tyndale,     William,     99-106, 

no,  115,  123,  130 

Uganda,  149,  178,  182 
Ulphilas,  71 
Upsala,  71 
Urdu  language,  153 
Ussher,  Abp. ,  195 
Uzziah,  23 

Vatican  MS.,  62,  64,  65 

Venice,  91 

Verbeck,  150 

Versions — 

Septuagint,  37,  58,  62,  92 
Early  Christian,  69-71 
Vulgate,  71,  72,  73,  81,  84, 

86,  90,92,  93,  95,  99 
Early  English,  73-84 
Reformation,  96-115 


Versions,  continxied — 

Douay    and   Rheims,    109, 

no.  III 
Missionary,  133-160 
A. v.,   67,   68,  80,  81,  115, 

T 16-132 
R.V. ,  46,  49,  60,  67,  68,  93, 
103,  1 16-132,  194,  201 
Victoria,  Queen,  84,  119,  164 
Vilvorde,  102 
Virgil,  162 
Vulgate,  see  Versions 

Waldo,  P.,  87 
Wartburg  Castle,  97 
Watts,  Dr.,  172 
Welsh  language,  96,  140 
Wesley,  John,  169 
Westcott,    Bp.,   35,   57,    108, 

113.  "9 
Westminster      Abbey       and 

Bridge,  83,  91,  163 
Whitby,  74 

Wilberforce,  William,  169 
Wilkinson,  D.  H.  D.,  188 
Winchester,  55 
Wisdom,  Book  of,  34 
Wittenberg,  96 
Wolsey,  Cardinal,  102,  104 
Wycliffe,  John,  77-84,  99 

Xavier,  Francis,  i6g 
Ximenes,  Cardinal,  92,  94 

York,  55,  82 

Yoruba  language,  148,  149 

Young's  Concordance,  186 

Zacharias,  60,  91,  194 
Zacynthius,  64 
Ziegenbalg,  135 


Printed  by  Ballantyne,  Hanson  dr»  Co. 
Edinburgh  <5r>  London. 


DATE  DUE 


CAVLORO 


I     ^ftlNTEOINl 


BS450  .S86 

The  story  of  the  Bible 

Princeton  Theological  Seminary  Speer  Library 


C 


